Here’s How Big Tech Plans To Rig The 2022 Midterms thumbnail

Here’s How Big Tech Plans To Rig The 2022 Midterms

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By Victoria Marshall

Through its censorship, Big Tech controls the flow of information that informs voters and impacts elections.

As the 2022 midterms loom, big tech companies are again announcing their plans to meddle in U.S. elections by censoring news and information. Social media censorship ramped up dramatically following President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, leading to companies such as Twitter and Facebook colluding with Democrat operatives in intelligence agencies to censor and suppress factual stories that harmed then-candidate Joe Biden during his 2020 campaign.

Two years later, following heavy documentation of the meddling, big tech companies are intent on using the same strategy. And they’re openly admitting as much.

Facebook

Nick Clegg, president of global affairs for Meta — Facebook’s parent company — wrote in a blog post that Facebook’s approach to the 2022 midterms will be “largely consistent with the policies and safeguards” from 2020.

Posts rated as false or partly false by one of Facebook’s 11 so-called “fact-checkers” will receive a label titled “false information,” causing their outreach to be dramatically limited. During the 2020 election, NeverTrump outlet The Dispatch — one of the fact-checkers — published an inaccurate “fact-check” that shut down public communications from pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List just weeks before the election.

Lead Stories, one of Facebook’s many left-wing “fact check” censors, is partly funded by the Democratic National Committee as well as Beijing-based ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok. In 2020, Lead Stories was responsible for censoring The Federalist’s own correct reporting about the Georgia election. After The Federalist criticized Lead Stories for its fake “fact-checking,” it was censored again.

While accurate stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were never fact-checked, their reach was also limited in 2020, as Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan. According to Zuckerberg, the FBI pressured Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story by falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation.

Such collusion between the intelligence community and Facebook is sure to continue: in its 2022 Factsheet outlining its approach to the U.S. midterms, the company writes that it will be “working with federal government partners including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as local and state election officials and industry peers, to make sure we’re all preparing for different scenarios.”

While discussing their approach to the midterms with The New York Times, Facebook employees said the company will take a “greater interest” in censoring information that it claims could lead to “real-world violence” like the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

According to internal documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s Disaggregating Harmful Networks Taskforce tracks hundreds of thousands of users and pages that could “distribute potentially harmful content.” Once Facebook employees identify a “dangerous information corridor” — networks of accounts, pages, and groups — they work to undermine it, usually by removing popular accounts or severely restricting users’ ability to transmit information. This is the same strategy Facebook applied when it censored more than 700,000 “Stop the Steal” supporters after the Jan 6. riot.

Yet Facebook took no action against the Democrat-funded and coordinated operation to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election by falsely accusing Donald Trump of being a traitor who stole the election by colluding with Russia. That lie, which led to mass public hysteria and years of investigations, is allowed free rein on its platform. Facebook’s so-called “fact-checkers” included journalists who participated in spreading the lie or otherwise allowed it to continue without censorship via fact-checking.

Despite this open political double standard, an internal memo from the task force claimed “an individual can question election results. But when it’s amplified by a movement, it can damage democracy. There is harm in the way movements shift norms and an understanding of collective truth.”

Twitter 

In August, Twitter announced it would begin enforcing its “Civic Integrity Policy” for the 2022 midterms. This means taking “action against misleading claims about the voting process, misleading content intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in the election, or misleading claims that may undermine public confidence in elections outcomes.”

Like Facebook, Twitter will label what it claims is “false or misleading” information as misinformation. Once labeled, such content will not be distributed by the company’s algorithms. Twitter may also remove “false or misleading” tweets entirely.

“In cases where there is potential for harm associated with the false or misleading claim, the Tweet may not be liked or shared to prevent the spread of the misleading information,” a company blog post reads. Such a policy is unlikely to apply to disinformation from the left. For example, during the 2020 election, Twitter refused to censor viral tweets pushing misinformation about USPS mailboxes that negatively affected the right.

Ironically — as Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson notes – Twitter was probably the single greatest source of disinformation during the 2020 election. Just weeks before the election, the social media company worked overtime to censor The New York Post’s story on First Son Hunter Biden’s laptop, even locking the Post’s account and those of other users’ who tried to distribute it.

As such, Twitter “brazenly hid a story from its users that, had they seen it, would have been quite damaging to Biden and certainly would have caused some people to change their votes,” Davidson wrote. Davidson was later deplatformed by Twitter for saying scientifically accurate truths about biological distinctions between men and women. Twitter routinely bans effective communicators who question left-wing narratives pushed by its company and other activists.

Of course, no censorship comes close to the level of Twitter (and Facebook) banning then-President Trump, leader of the Republican Party, from their platforms after the Jan. 6 riot — effectively cutting off communication from the president of the United States to his supporters and the rest of the country.

TikTok

Arguably the most popular social network in America right now, TikTok announced that it would also be countering so-called election misinformation through its Elections Center, a segment of the app that will “connect people who engage with election content to authoritative information and sources in more than 45 languages.”

As Federalist Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky reported, this gives the Chinese-owned social media company access to the voting profiles of all American users who opt to use TikTok’s Elections Center. As TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is connected to the Chinese Communist Party, TikTok’s Elections Center “will put detailed voter profiles in the hands of a company based in Beijing, stocked with party members and state employees, subject to laws that allow the Chinese government data access.” 

As Jashinsky notes, China could influence the midterm elections using this data, as well as censoring American public discourse in favor of the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical ambitions by either fomenting public discord or undermining anti-CCP politicians under the guise of “combatting misinformation.”

YouTube was the last major social media platform to announce that it, too, had a plan to combat misinformation leading up to November’s general election.

In a Sept. 1 blog post, the company wrote that searches for midterm-related videos will prioritize “content coming from authoritative national and local news sources like PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, Univision and local ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates,” although many of these corporate media outlets possess a heavy left-wing bias. Any content deemed “borderline” misinformation will be prevented from being widely distributed.

YouTube also claimed it will remove “election content that violates our policies,” including “misleading voters on how to vote, encouraging interference in the democratic process, inciting violence, or advancing certain types of election misinformation,” which includes “election integrity” content.

While this policy will be enforced regardless of “political viewpoint,” the company emphasized that videos “claiming widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, or alleging the election was stolen or rigged” would violate its policies. YouTube allows members of the Democrat Party to continue using its platform to claim elections it loses are rigged or stolen.

Democratic organizations were accidentally granted access to a trove of Republican voter data on Snapchat, enabling them to hone their political ads leading up to the 2022 midterms. As Federalist Staff Writer Shawn Fleetwood reports, a “slip-up” by Snapchat gave groups such as the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign access to voter data by Republican-aligned firm i360. Such groups used the data to create targeted political ads to sway voters.

While Snapchat claims it is working to rectify such supposedly accidental data sharing, “the blunder underscores the sensitivities surrounding reams of voter data that have become a highly valuable political commodity,” Axios writes.

While the data breach affected both Republican and Democrat data firms, the data’s “use by political groups was significantly more prolific on the Democratic side.”

What This Means

Much like in 2020, Big Tech companies are actively censoring information they deem harmful to their official narrative or preferred candidates. By falsely labeling factual information from conservatives “misinformation,” such companies have the power to control the flow of information that informs voters and rig elections in their favor.

It’s been heavily reported that companies like Facebook and Twitter have colluded with the Biden administration to censor information related to Covid-19. As the Biden administration already has plans to massively influence the 2022 midterms, they and other Democrats will continue to collude with big tech to swing high-stakes congressional races come November.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

The Origins of the New Right – And its Future thumbnail

The Origins of the New Right – And its Future

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By Charlie Kirk

A true America First platform is the only way forward.

The conservative movement has reached a definitive turning point in 2022. We can clearly see the emergence of a new right forming before our very eyes. The political process which ignited anew with onset of the Trump era is maturing, and a whole new crop of leaders are grabbing the proverbial baton, furthering and deepening the ideological and intellectual strands of the movement. The old Republican Party, which despite winning some electoral victories, has been on life support for years now. The energy of the grassroots, and now more and more of new elected officials, is giving way to a new nationalist, conservative populism which, in a very positive way, is bigger than Donald Trump.

To understand the evolution of the grassroots conservative movement of today, it’s informative to go back to the 1990s. At the time, America felt wholly triumphant. The Cold War was won, communism was vanquished, and the economy was awash in easy cash of the dot com era. Of course, there were many deep problems in America–spiritual, moral, and economic to name a few–but the patina of optimism of the 90s made them much harder to see.

Politically, Republicans and Democrats still bickered and engaged in partisan fighting, but there was little doubt in the fundamental beliefs of globalism and secularism. The desirability of open trade, mass immigration, and the assurance of America as the world’s police force was never seriously questioned. And why would they be? America was the top dog. It was the end of history, and we were the winners. McDonald’s and Nikes for everyone. Anyone who feels different “goes voluntarily into a madhouse,” as Nietzsche would say.

Then September 11th, 2001 happened. The heinous attacks woke Americans up to the harsh realities of a changing global landscape that had been hidden behind the veneer of 90s exuberance. Unfortunately, we learned all the wrong lessons from it. Instead of responding to the attacks by restricting immigration and second-guessing ­­­unchecked globalism, we created a massive domestic surveillance state, commissioned more federal bloat with the establishment of the DHS, and employed tens of thousands of unionized TSA agents. Instead of realizing that there are fundamental cultural differences with the Muslim world, we tried to turn Iraq into a western-style democracy. And when a cataclysmic act of “holy war” should have roused us from our secular fever dream, we instead doubled down on neoliberal secularism ill-suited for the coming conflicts of the 21st century. After 9/11, America should’ve become a serious country again. Instead, the George W. Bush years saw a succession of failed wars, failed policies, and finally, a financial crisis that resulted in the election of Barack Obama.

Red state America was stunned by the rise of Obama in 2008, but even then, the establishment Republican Party was frozen in a retrograde response, plagiarizing talking points from pages from the Reagan administration. Instead, the rebellion against Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America was left to the grassroots. Thus, the Tea Party movement began. Millions of Americans joined, organized, and donated to Tea Party groups in the hope of stalling President Obama’s agenda. The Tea Party was comprised of a ragtag group of everyday activists who spread the message to millions more. But the grassroots energy still couldn’t propel a candidate to win at the national level. In 2012, the Tea Party had to settle for Mitt Romney, who of course lost to Obama and has been a stooge for Democrats ever since.

It wasn’t until 2016 that the grassroots energy created by the Tea Party would be translated into a presidential candidate in the form of the Donald Trump campaign. But so much had changed between 2012 and 2016 that even a Tea Party-style movement was ill-equipped to overcome it. Like a cancerous tumor, the academic language of intersectionality and wokeness was already taking root, first conquering college campuses before moving to corporate boardrooms and eventually the halls of Congress. Racial tensions were inflamed during the Obama years, with the Black Lives Matter movement being born from media lies like “Hands up, don’t shoot” in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting. Meanwhile, the rise of Bernie Sanders surprised many across the aisle, proving that when our economy isn’t rewarding every day, middle-class workers, left-wing socialists rise.

By the time the 2016 election came, we needed more than just the Tea Party. We needed someone who could take the fight to the culture and masterfully play the media. We were lucky, then, that Donald Trump stepped into the fray. Only Trump could bulldoze the Republican establishment—which had actively fought the grassroots from taking control of the party—radically reshaping and challenging GOP orthodoxy in a hostile takeover.

The Trump presidency came and went with a series of great accomplishments. Let nobody downplay the successes of those four years–there were tremendous victories both at home and abroad. Most importantly, there were four years of a president who didn’t cower to the media, the deep state, or the political establishment of either party.

However, it is also true that Trump was hamstrung by several factors. Despite Republican majorities for two years, Trump had to deal with a Paul Ryan-led House that diverted crucial attention and political capital away from important campaign promises like building the wall, restricting immigration, and taking on left-wing corporations. There were also infuriating moments like Sen. John McCain’s 3 AM vote to kill an Obamacare repeal and the ever-annoying presence of the “old crow” Mitch McConnell setting up roadblock after roadblock to MAGA. 

There was also the deep state’s unrelenting war waged on Trump’s presidency. First, there was Russiagate and Comey, which morphed into the Mueller investigation, a farce that dragged on for two years only to produce nothing (and has recently been tied directly to the Hillary Clinton Campaign). Then there was the failed CIA-instigated impeachment of Trump over his “perfect” phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Finally, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which not only crushed America under a series of lockdown measures but also served as the pretext for massive vote-by-mail schemes that likely succeeded in preventing Trump’s second term. Finally, Trump was impeached yet again in the aftermath of January 6th.

This brings us to the current moment. Populist conservatives like JD Vance and Blake Masters are on the rise; President Trump remains virtually in full control of the GOP; and his endorsement has proven crucial to most candidates’ primary success. The new right is clearly on the rise. But it’s far too early to declare victory. For the new right to win, it must elucidate crystal clear policies and values that it stands for. It needs to set its principles now or risk setting itself up for imminent failure. As someone who is deeply entrenched in the grassroots movement, and who knows and supports many of its most outspoken proponents, allow me to articulate what should be, the new right’s bedrock non-negotiables.

It starts with establishing an immigration system that ensures our country is no longer taken advantage of. No issue is more important in determining the future of our country. We need an immigration policy that prioritizes American workers, not foreign nationals. We need to build the wall and end illegal immigration completely. And we need to dramatically lower the level of foreign workers coming into the United States at the expense of American jobs and salaries.

Second, we must reorient American foreign policy in a realistic, America First direction. We have no desire to nation-build or warmonger abroad. For 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, America has engaged in many useless conflicts aimed at creating democracy in far-flung corners of the world. We’re done with that. We also need to take a good look at our membership in organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Our membership in organizations with defensive treaties must be examined carefully to determine what is truly in our interest. This is not to say that we should be isolationist, quite the opposite. We should engage with world powers as we see fit, not rely on old ways of thinking and failed globalist policies. This also means targeting the Washington, D.C. cabal of corrupt foreign lobbying from unfriendly powers, and of course, the military-industrial complex that seeks to profit from endless U.S. adventurism abroad.

Third, there needs to be a total and complete war on wokeness. At school boards, in state houses, inside corporate boardrooms, and on college campuses, wokeness needs to be eradicated. The toxic ideology of Critical Race Theory, pronouns, the radical trans madness, and the myriad attacks on our history must be destroyed. Wokeness and intersectionality are cancers on the American body politic, and the conservative movement needs to identify threats and fight them on every front.

Fourth, our unconditional love for the corporation is over. The new right must focus on economic patriotism. Corporations that push woke values on our children will find no friends on the new right. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on Disney in response to their left-wing activism is a model for all to follow and we must use state power to regulate big tech corporations like Meta, Twitter, and Amazon until they completely embrace free speech on their platforms. The best and most straightforward way to guarantee this is to make the rules of social media companies reflect the same exact standard of lawful speech enshrined in our Constitution. Anything that one can say or do in a public park is what they can say or do on Twitter or Facebook, without restriction or censorship. When conservatives have the right to unfettered speech online, a massive pillar of the left’s power will be taken away.

Fifth, we must become the most pro-family, pro-parents party the country has ever known. Fundamentally, the new right must be about decentralizing power away from the D.C. bureaucrats and the consultant class, and there is no purer path to doing so than empowering the American family. We must be in favor of policies that empower married couples to have children affordably, and we must enable them to safeguard their children’s education. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it will also create a political siphoning effect, drawing away key minorities from the Democrat Party to the new conservative brand. If we are truly going to be America first, we must put American families first.

Finally, nothing we do to save our civilization will be worth it if we lose God. America, its system of law, and its very character have all been forged in the Judeo-Christian heritage passed down to us from our Founders. The revitalization of Christianity in the public square is essential to building a better American future. Christians must be ecumenical, coming together across denominations to rebuild a common moral culture. We must fight the civilizational ennui that results from atheism and postmodernism. Moral relativism on questions of gender and abortion must be rejected. This also means rejecting race essentialism and affirming that no one of any race is born wrong. We are all made in God’s image and must reject the false ideology of intersectionality that reduces people down to existing only within the marginalized group they were born. Along with this comes a broader defense of our history and Western civilization. While we are far from perfect, Western Civilization, rooted in faith and its traditions–legal, intellectual, spiritual–must thrive if America is to thrive. The new right can be the catalyst for this spiritual renewal.

While some on the new right may squabble with one position or another, these principles together hold the key to victory. Not just political victory, but civilizational. If we stick to these principles now and reshape the Republican Party in this direction from within, then we may yet restore America to its true form.

 is the founder and president of Turning Point USA and host of the top-rated podcast and nationally syndicated Salem radio program, The Charlie Kirk Show.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Threats To The Court Are The Real Threat To Democracy thumbnail

Threats To The Court Are The Real Threat To Democracy

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By Thomas C. Patterson

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with the concurrence of much of the Left, believes our democracy is once again under attack, this time from our own “rogue“ Supreme Court. MSNBC agreed that “the Supreme Court has gone rogue“. The Congressional Progressive Caucus insists “we must hold these rogue justices to account“.

It goes beyond coordinated hysterical rhetoric. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded that Democratic Party leaders share their plans for “solving the problem of the rogue court“. The New York Times advised “the Constitution provides a number of paths by which Congress can restrain and discipline a rogue court.”  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced the Supreme Court Review Act to “check the court’s rogue decisions“.

Not only is the court rogue, but so are the six justices who normally form the majority. According to protesters at a recent anti-court rally, Roberts is an “impotent fool”, Kavanaugh a “drunken rapist” and Thomas a “traitor and perv”.

“Strong women scare” Alito, Gorsuch “stole his seat“.  Barrett is in “an actual cult“.

Scholars like Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky write that none of the justices should be there. Georgia State Law professor Eric Segall argues that the Court’s illegitimate rulings should just be ignored.

But what rulings from this last term were radical, extra-legal interpretations of the Constitution? Here are some of the purportedly rogue rulings:

– an administrative agency must have congressional authority to make far-reaching decisions

– if states subsidize students in private schools, they can’t exclude religious schools

– since the constitution is silent on abortion regulation, per the 10th Amendment states retain the authority

– the Second Amendment actually prescribes the right to bear arms.

Reasonable people can disagree with these as policy prescriptions. However, the rulings are hardly constitutionally outrageous by any standard. They are not even that politically unpopular, except on the activist Left.

Still, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed, with no substantiation, that overturning Roe v. Wade was an “unconstitutional action“. But most court critics don’t argue about constitutionality. They simply don’t like the results of the rulings.

Americans have politicized the court through failure to understand its role and purpose.  Commentators commonly characterize justices as liberal or conservative, implying their personal ideologies are the legitimate basis of their judicial opinions. Sometimes they’re even referred to as Democrats or Republicans.

Indeed, Barack Obama, himself a former constitutional law professor, wanted his Supreme Court nominees to “understand that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory“.  Rather they should have “empathy…understanding and identifying with peoples’ hopes and struggles“.

But as the late Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out, there are fundamentally two grounds for federal court rulings: the text of the constitution and laws or…what? Ideological chaos where ultimately the personal opinions of the judges prevail.

Americans not only tolerate this practice, they demand it. Partisans fully expect the court to protect their ideological interests, to be their backup when the legislative process fails to produce the desired results.

Thus another critic claims the current court is deemed to have rogue status because it “acted under conservative control, as if it stands above the constitutional system, unaccountable to anyone other than itself“. But the court by design is not supposed to be “accountable” to the political process.

Justices don’t face elections precisely so that they can be an independent third branch.  They are free to protect minority rights and serve as a check against populist excesses in the democratically elected branches.

In return for their independence, judges bear a solemn responsibility to follow the Constitution. Any other course leads to government by black-robed tyrants not subject to any checks or balances.

In our cancel culture, justices have been seriously threatened with physical harm. Leftist politicians have proposed structural reforms like packing the court, blowing it up, or ignoring it. But these are dangerous threats to the rule of law.

Those unhappy with the current court’s decisions should utilize the traditional means available to effect change. Amend the constitution, change the laws, and appoint new judges when the time comes.

An independent judiciary is a hallmark of all successful democracies.  Attempts to punish and threaten judges for their decisions are the real threat to our republic.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

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Jewish Gun Group Plans to Sue New York Over Law Banning Concealed Carry in Churches and Synagogues

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By Michael Tennant

A Jewish firearms organization is preparing to sue New York state over its new gun-control law, which prohibits most congregants from carrying a concealed weapon into a house of worship.

The New York State Jewish Gun Club has “retained a civil rights attorney to challenge the law and is asking others to join the fight,” reports the Bronx’s News 12. “[Founder Tzvi Waldman] says synagogues should be able to let licensed civilians carry guns in case of an attack.”

The law, known as the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), was introduced and passed on July 1, just eight days after the Supreme Court invalidated the Empire State’s prior, highly restrictive concealed-carry law. The CCIA, which took effect September 1, makes it a felony for anyone to carry a concealed weapon in a “sensitive” location unless he is an active or retired police officer, an active-duty member of the military, or a private security guard. As one might expect from a law specifically designed to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision, that list of “sensitive” locations is quite lengthy and includes most public buildings, private businesses, schools, and houses of worship.

Houses of worship, especially synagogues, have good reason to oppose the new law. As New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms observes, “In essence, the state has made it unlawful for houses of worship to have armed congregants serve as members of their security teams unless those congregants are active or retired law enforcement officers. Churches would be permitted to hire professional security, but that could prove cost prohibitive for many houses of worship.”

It is, in fact, quite common for churches and synagogues to have congregants packing heat.

“Almost every orthodox synagogue in Baltimore has an armed congregant,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the managing director for the Coalition of Jewish Values, told the Daily Caller. “People do not feel like calling the police or having an armed security guard who may be five blocks away is enough.”

Even if the police got there in time, they could react as the officers did during the May school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. “What happens if we run into a police officer who does not want to involve himself?” Pastor Jesse Stevenson of Revive Church of Rockland County told News 12. “Why then would it not be necessary for someone who is licensed to carry?”

Houses of worship have, after all, been the sites of several shootings in recent years, from the 2015 South Carolina church shooting to the 2017 Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. A 2019 attack on a Texas church was largely thwarted by an armed worshiper, demonstrating the value of allowing concealed weapons in church services.

“The average Orthodox Jew spends up to 20 hours a week in shul (synagogue). So for us, not being able to be protected in shul means more than the average person who goes to church once a week,” Waldman told News 12.

Jews aren’t alone in fearing racially motivated attacks during worship. One clergyman told Buffalo’s WGRZ that the racist who allegedly shot 13 people, killing 10, at a Tops supermarket in that city “was seen on security camera video apparently casing an East Buffalo church the week before his supermarket attack.” Another clergy member “said they would not allow themselves to be sitting targets for a killer looking for a place where Black people congregate,” meaning worshipers at that minister’s church should be permitted to arm themselves.

“Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not congregants should be allowed to carry in church,” asserted New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. “Instead, state government has taken that decision out of their hands.”

Not if the gun club’s proposed lawsuit succeeds. Waldman told the Daily Caller he is “very confident” the courts will overturn the CCIA because it is “unconstitutional on so many levels.”

“The Second Amendment,” he declared, “is not a second-class right.”

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Weekend Read: The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment. thumbnail

Weekend Read: The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment.

/in , , , , /by

By Richard W. Stevens

Editors’ Note:  This well-reasoned argument was made before several Supreme Court decisions which affirm, that the right to keep and bear arms, is an individual right.  Two important decisions in that regard were rendered just this year, even though the right of self-protection has long been part of our history and tradition.  This morning, a lead editorial in the  Wall Street Journal cites a “new study” from Clemson University showing that where Blacks kept arms, they were much less likely to be lynched in the Jim Crow South.  You would hardly think a “study” would be necessary to confirm common sense, but as readers likely know, common sense is in short supply these days. A number of states continue to try to make an end run around recent Supreme Court decisions and have reconfigured their onerous restrictions on the right to have arms in defiance of the Court. Likewise, Progressives have successfully bullied banks and others to deny credit to gun dealers and credit card companies are now conspiring among themselves and with Progressive pressure groups to code firearms-related transactions in a way that could act as a national registry. There is a growing ominous trend whereby Progressives, are unable to democratically get their way in the legislatures, and are unable to prevail in court, but resort to enlisting private companies to deny rights to citizens. That these companies would even consider alienating more than half the population, and hence many of their customers, is an indication of how “woke culture” has captured the executive suite. In order to appreciate the importance of these recent Supreme Court decisions and corporate developments, it is likewise helpful to revisit the Biblical antecedents for the right of self-defense and the English common law.  Much like a cut flower, you can’t expect the flower to remain beautiful for very long if it is severed from its roots. Hence, you can’t expect our rights to be protected if severed from the philosophical roots that produced them. You would think freedom-enhancing positions would be supported without much argument.  But the actions of many governors and legislatures in Democrat-run states, corporate executives, as well as recent statements from the Premier of Canada Justin Trudeau; indicate that many in the West no longer understand the origins of Western morality or the theory of natural rights.  Or maybe, they do understand the origin of these rights, and rather wish to destroy the roots from which they have grown.

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


FIRST: The Second Amendment protects an individual right that existed before the creation of any government. The Declaration of Independence made clear that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are created to protect those rights.

A. The unalienable right to freedom from violent harm, and the right to self-defense, both exist before and outside of secular government.

  • 1. Torah: Exodus 22:2.
  • 2. Talmud: Jewish law set forth in the Talmud states, “If someone comes to kill you, arise quickly and kill him.” (Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin. 1994,2, 72a; The Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Berakoth. 1990, 58a, 62b).
  • 3. Roman Catholic Doctrine: Christian doctrine has long asserted the right and duty of self defense. “Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.” See Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, sections 2263-65 (citing and quoting Thomas Aquinas).
  • 4. Protestant Doctrine: Individual has a personal and unalienable right to self-defense, even against the government. Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex [1644]1982, pp. 159-166, 183-185 (Sprinkle Publications edition.) Jesus advised his disciples to arm themselves in view of likely persecution. Luke 22:36.

B. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690) aimed at reforming Britain’s monarchy and parliamentary system and limiting the power of government and profoundly influenced the Founders and all Western Civilization. John Locke explained that civil government properly exists to more effectively protect the rights that all individuals have in the “state of nature.” The individuals have the rights to life, liberty, and property. They give the civil government power over themselves only to the extent that it better protects those rights. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, specifically declared that the ideas of John Locke’s Second Treatise were “generally approved by the citizens of the United States.”Jefferson mandated that Locke’s Second Treatise be taught in the University of Virginia.

C. Christian religious thinkers, such as Samuel Rutherford (in Lex, Rex, 1644) argued that man’s rights come from G-d. Using Biblical principles and examples, they argued against the notion that kings ruled by divine right. To be legitimate authorities, all governments must uphold man’s rights and do justice. Otherwise, the people owe a lawless and tyrannical ruler no allegiance at all.

D. Cicero, Rome’s leading orator, had early argued that the right to self-defense was natural and inborn, and not a creation of the government. The right to use weapons was a necessary part of the right to self-defense — any view to the contrary was silly nonsense. [Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of A Constitutional Right (1984), p. 17, fn 76-77.]

E. The right to keep and bear arms simply implements the unalienable right to individual self-defense against aggression of any kind. The Second Amendment refers to “the right of the people” (not the state) as a pre-existing right that government must respect.

F. The United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, indicated that the word “people” in the Second Amendment referred to individuals, not to states. [494 U.S. 259 (1990)] (This was not a holding or ruling of law, but an observation by the Court).

SECOND: The language of the Second Amendment prohibits the federal government from “infringing” on this right of the people. There is nothing ambiguous about “shall not be infringed.” (See Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed.1983, p. 941.) The language of the Second Amendment is about as clear as the First Amendment’s prohibiting Congress from infringing the right to freedom of speech, press, and religious expression. There is no logical reason to read the Second Amendment as a weak statement, while treating the First Amendment as a strong protector of rights.

A. The Second Amendment protects a fundamental right and should be read broadly because it implements the right of self-defense. Self-defense is the ultimate right of all individuals to preserve life. The rights to a free press, free speech, assembly, and religion are extremely important — but none of them matters very much if you can’t defend your own life against aggression. None of them matters very much when an evil government is fully armed and its citizens are disarmed.

B. Article I, Section 8, clauses 15 and 16 of the U.S. Constitution refer to Congress’s powers concerning the state militias. Clause 15 empowers Congress to “call forth” the state militias into national service for specific purposes. Clause 16 empowers Congress to organize, arm and discipline the state militias, and to govern the militias while they are in national service. The Second Amendment confines Congress’s power by guaranteeing that the Congress cannot “govern” the militias right out of existence and thereby disarm “the people.”

THIRD: The Second Amendment refers to “a well-regulated militia.”The right of the people to form citizen militias was unquestioned by the Founders.

A. The Federalist Papers, No. 28: Alexander Hamilton expressed that when a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.[Halbrook, p. 67]

B. The Federalist Papers, No. 29: Alexander Hamilton explained that an armed citizenry was the best and only real defense against a standing army becoming large and oppressive. [Halbrook, p. 67]

C. The Federalist Papers, No. 46: James Madison contended that ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms. [Halbrook, p. 67]

D. There was no National Guard, and the Founders opposed anything but a very small national military. The phrase “well-regulated” means well-trained and disciplined — not “regulated” as we understand that term in the modern sense of bureaucratic regulation. [This meaning still can be found in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. 1989, Vol 13, p. 524, and Vol 20. p. 138.]

E. The Federalists promised that state governments and citizen militias would exist to make sure the federal military never became large or oppressive. To say that the National Guard replaces the notion of the militia runs contrary to what the Founders said and wrote.

F. The Third Amendment: Expressly restrains the federal government from building a standing army and infiltrating it among the people …and at the people’s expense … in times of peace. The Third Amendment runs against the idea of a permanent standing army or federalized National Guard in principle, if not by its words.

FOURTH: The Second Amendment begins with the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” Some people argue that this phrase limits the right to keep and bear arms to militias only … which they say means the National Guard. Very recent research shows, however, that it was the style of writing legal documents in the late 1700s to include a preamble. The Constitution has a preamble, and the Bill of Rights has a preamble — yet people don’t argue that the Constitution is limited by the preamble. Professor Eugene Volokh at the UCLA Law School has examined numerous other state constitutions of the same general time period, and observed this kind of preamble language in many of them. (The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N.Y. Univ. Law Rev. 793-821 (1998)). The preamble states a purpose, not a limitation on the language in these government charters.

A. Examples:

  • New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 contained a preamble for the freedom of the press: “The Liberty of the Press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”
  • Rhode Island’s 1842 state constitution recited a preamble before its declaration of the right of free speech and press: “The liberty of the press being essential to the security of freedom in a state, any person may publish his sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty…”
  • New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 also contained a detailed preamble and explanation of purpose for its right to a criminal trial in the vicinity where the crime occurred.
  • The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the 1784 New Hampshire Constitution, and the 1786 Vermont Constitution, all contained preambles or explanations of the right of freedom of speech and debate in the state legislatures.
  • The New Hampshire Constitution also gave an explanation, right in the text, for why there should be no ex post facto laws.

B. The Second Amendment falls right within the style of legal drafting of the late 1700’s. The “militia” clause emphasizes the individual right to keep and bear arms by explaining one of its most important purposes. The militia clause does not limit the right.

FIFTH: Before the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment, many states enacted laws that made it illegal for slaves and for free black people to possess firearms (unless they had their master’s permission or a government approval). [See list, with sources in law reviews, in Gran’pa Jack No. 4 ]

A. The Second Amendment did not protect black people then, because(1) it was understood to limit the federal government’s power only and (2) black people were not considered citizens whose rights deserved to be protected. [Dred Scott decision, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) (Judge Taney observed that if blacks had the privileges and immunities of citizenship, then they would be able to freely possess and carry arms … unthinkable to Southern slave owners.)][Halbrook, pp. 98, 114-15]

B. The Second Amendment was designed by people who did not want to become slaves to their government, but they were unfortunately and tragically willing to permit private slavery in some states. Now that slavery is abolished, however, all citizens of all races should enjoy the Second Amendment’s legal protection against despotic government.

SIXTH: Several Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal have held that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right, but only a collective right of states to form a militia. The federal court decisions cite United States v. Miller as precedent. The 1939 Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller, did not make that ruling. Even in Miller, where only the prosecution filed a brief and the defendant’s position was not even briefed or argued to the Court, the Supreme Court held that the federal government could only regulate firearms that had no military purpose. [307 U.S. 174 (1939)] [See JPFO special report about Miller case]

  • A. Nowadays, gun prohibitionists want to illegalize firearms unless they have a “sporting purpose.” The “sporting purpose” idea was part of the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938. JPFO has shown that the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968 imported much of its organization, content, and phrasing, from the Nazi Weapons Law. [See … Zelman, Gateway to Tyranny]
  • B. In contrast, even under the U.S. v. Miller case, the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear military firearms. Learn how the federal courts deceptively and misleadingly employed the Miller decision to deny the individual right to keep and bear arms in Barnett, Can the Simple Cite Be Trusted?: Lower Court Interpretations of United States v. Miller and the Second Amendment, 26 Cumberland Law Review 961-1004 (1996).
  • C. A federal judge recently struck down a federal “gun control” statute as unconstitutional in United States v. Emerson, 46 F. Supp. 2d 598 (N.D. Tex. 1999). In his scholarly written opinion, District Judge Cummings extensively reviewed the law and historical foundations of the Second Amendment to conclude that the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment is an individual right. The Emerson decision remains pending an appeal in the Fifth Circuit as of this date.

Before a government can become a full-blown tyranny, the government must first disarm its citizens. The Founders of this nation, from their own experience, knew that when government goes bad, liberty evaporates and people die … unless the people are armed.

CHALLENGE TO AMERICANS

As you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

  • (1) Look at the enumerated powers of the federal government;
  • (2) Look at the express limitations on federal power as set forth in the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments;
  • (3) Ask yourself, where does the federal government get any power at all to regulate firearms?
  • (4) Ask yourself, why don’t the high school and college textbooks devote any time to the history, philosophical basis, and practical meaning of the Second Amendment?

And then consider that law students and future lawyers likewise have received precious little education about the Second Amendment.

Realize, too, that the judges know just about as little. Then imagine how little the average American knows — based on the average public school coverage of the Constitution.

The protection of our sacred right of self-defense against both petty criminals and oppressive government — the right of civilians to keep and bear arms — is in your hands.

*****

This article was published by JPFO, Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Weekend Read: The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment thumbnail

Weekend Read: The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment

/in , , , , /by

By Richard W. Stevens

Editors’ Note:  This well-reasoned argument was made before several Supreme Court decisions which affirm, that the right to keep and bear arms, is an individual right.  Two important decisions in that regard were rendered just this year, even though the right of self-protection has long been part of our history and tradition.  This morning, a lead editorial in the  Wall Street Journal cites a “new study” from Clemson University showing that where Blacks kept arms, they were much less likely to be lynched in the Jim Crow South.  You would hardly think a “study” would be necessary to confirm common sense, but as readers likely know, common sense is in short supply these days. A number of states continue to try to make an end run around recent Supreme Court decisions and have reconfigured their onerous restrictions on the right to have arms in defiance of the Court. Likewise, Progressives have successfully bullied banks and others to deny credit to gun dealers and credit card companies are now conspiring among themselves and with Progressive pressure groups to code firearms-related transactions in a way that could act as a national registry. There is a growing ominous trend whereby Progressives, are unable to democratically get their way in the legislatures, and are unable to prevail in court, but resort to enlisting private companies to deny rights to citizens. That these companies would even consider alienating more than half the population, and hence many of their customers, is an indication of how “woke culture” has captured the executive suite. In order to appreciate the importance of these recent Supreme Court decisions and corporate developments, it is likewise helpful to revisit the Biblical antecedents for the right of self-defense and the English common law.  Much like a cut flower, you can’t expect the flower to remain beautiful for very long if it is severed from its roots. Hence, you can’t expect our rights to be protected if severed from the philosophical roots that produced them. You would think freedom-enhancing positions would be supported without much argument.  But the actions of many governors and legislatures in Democrat-run states, corporate executives, as well as recent statements from the Premier of Canada Justin Trudeau; indicate that many in the West no longer understand the origins of Western morality or the theory of natural rights.  Or maybe, they do understand the origin of these rights, and rather wish to destroy the roots from which they have grown.

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.


FIRST: The Second Amendment protects an individual right that existed before the creation of any government. The Declaration of Independence made clear that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are created to protect those rights.

A. The unalienable right to freedom from violent harm, and the right to self-defense, both exist before and outside of secular government.

  • 1. Torah: Exodus 22:2.
  • 2. Talmud: Jewish law set forth in the Talmud states, “If someone comes to kill you, arise quickly and kill him.” (Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin. 1994,2, 72a; The Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Berakoth. 1990, 58a, 62b).
  • 3. Roman Catholic Doctrine: Christian doctrine has long asserted the right and duty of self defense. “Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.” See Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, sections 2263-65 (citing and quoting Thomas Aquinas).
  • 4. Protestant Doctrine: Individual has a personal and unalienable right to self-defense, even against the government. Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex [1644]1982, pp. 159-166, 183-185 (Sprinkle Publications edition.) Jesus advised his disciples to arm themselves in view of likely persecution. Luke 22:36.

B. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690) aimed at reforming Britain’s monarchy and parliamentary system and limiting the power of government and profoundly influenced the Founders and all Western Civilization. John Locke explained that civil government properly exists to more effectively protect the rights that all individuals have in the “state of nature.” The individuals have the rights to life, liberty, and property. They give the civil government power over themselves only to the extent that it better protects those rights. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, specifically declared that the ideas of John Locke’s Second Treatise were “generally approved by the citizens of the United States.”Jefferson mandated that Locke’s Second Treatise be taught in the University of Virginia.

C. Christian religious thinkers, such as Samuel Rutherford (in Lex, Rex, 1644) argued that man’s rights come from G-d. Using Biblical principles and examples, they argued against the notion that kings ruled by divine right. To be legitimate authorities, all governments must uphold man’s rights and do justice. Otherwise, the people owe a lawless and tyrannical ruler no allegiance at all.

D. Cicero, Rome’s leading orator, had early argued that the right to self-defense was natural and inborn, and not a creation of the government. The right to use weapons was a necessary part of the right to self-defense — any view to the contrary was silly nonsense. [Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of A Constitutional Right (1984), p. 17, fn 76-77.]

E. The right to keep and bear arms simply implements the unalienable right to individual self-defense against aggression of any kind. The Second Amendment refers to “the right of the people” (not the state) as a pre-existing right that government must respect.

F. The United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, indicated that the word “people” in the Second Amendment referred to individuals, not to states. [494 U.S. 259 (1990)] (This was not a holding or ruling of law, but an observation by the Court).

SECOND: The language of the Second Amendment prohibits the federal government from “infringing” on this right of the people. There is nothing ambiguous about “shall not be infringed.” (See Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed.1983, p. 941.) The language of the Second Amendment is about as clear as the First Amendment’s prohibiting Congress from infringing the right to freedom of speech, press, and religious expression. There is no logical reason to read the Second Amendment as a weak statement, while treating the First Amendment as a strong protector of rights.

A. The Second Amendment protects a fundamental right and should be read broadly because it implements the right of self-defense. Self-defense is the ultimate right of all individuals to preserve life. The rights to a free press, free speech, assembly, and religion are extremely important — but none of them matters very much if you can’t defend your own life against aggression. None of them matters very much when an evil government is fully armed and its citizens are disarmed.

B. Article I, Section 8, clauses 15 and 16 of the U.S. Constitution refer to Congress’s powers concerning the state militias. Clause 15 empowers Congress to “call forth” the state militias into national service for specific purposes. Clause 16 empowers Congress to organize, arm and discipline the state militias, and to govern the militias while they are in national service. The Second Amendment confines Congress’s power by guaranteeing that the Congress cannot “govern” the militias right out of existence and thereby disarm “the people.”

THIRD: The Second Amendment refers to “a well-regulated militia.”The right of the people to form citizen militias was unquestioned by the Founders.

A. The Federalist Papers, No. 28: Alexander Hamilton expressed that when a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.[Halbrook, p. 67]

B. The Federalist Papers, No. 29: Alexander Hamilton explained that an armed citizenry was the best and only real defense against a standing army becoming large and oppressive. [Halbrook, p. 67]

C. The Federalist Papers, No. 46: James Madison contended that ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms. [Halbrook, p. 67]

D. There was no National Guard, and the Founders opposed anything but a very small national military. The phrase “well-regulated” means well-trained and disciplined — not “regulated” as we understand that term in the modern sense of bureaucratic regulation. [This meaning still can be found in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. 1989, Vol 13, p. 524, and Vol 20. p. 138.]

E. The Federalists promised that state governments and citizen militias would exist to make sure the federal military never became large or oppressive. To say that the National Guard replaces the notion of the militia runs contrary to what the Founders said and wrote.

F. The Third Amendment: Expressly restrains the federal government from building a standing army and infiltrating it among the people …and at the people’s expense … in times of peace. The Third Amendment runs against the idea of a permanent standing army or federalized National Guard in principle, if not by its words.

FOURTH: The Second Amendment begins with the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” Some people argue that this phrase limits the right to keep and bear arms to militias only … which they say means the National Guard. Very recent research shows, however, that it was the style of writing legal documents in the late 1700s to include a preamble. The Constitution has a preamble, and the Bill of Rights has a preamble — yet people don’t argue that the Constitution is limited by the preamble. Professor Eugene Volokh at the UCLA Law School has examined numerous other state constitutions of the same general time period, and observed this kind of preamble language in many of them. (The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N.Y. Univ. Law Rev. 793-821 (1998)). The preamble states a purpose, not a limitation on the language in these government charters.

A. Examples:

  • New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 contained a preamble for the freedom of the press: “The Liberty of the Press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”
  • Rhode Island’s 1842 state constitution recited a preamble before its declaration of the right of free speech and press: “The liberty of the press being essential to the security of freedom in a state, any person may publish his sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty…”
  • New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 also contained a detailed preamble and explanation of purpose for its right to a criminal trial in the vicinity where the crime occurred.
  • The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the 1784 New Hampshire Constitution, and the 1786 Vermont Constitution, all contained preambles or explanations of the right of freedom of speech and debate in the state legislatures.
  • The New Hampshire Constitution also gave an explanation, right in the text, for why there should be no ex post facto laws.

B. The Second Amendment falls right within the style of legal drafting of the late 1700’s. The “militia” clause emphasizes the individual right to keep and bear arms by explaining one of its most important purposes. The militia clause does not limit the right.

FIFTH: Before the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment, many states enacted laws that made it illegal for slaves and for free black people to possess firearms (unless they had their master’s permission or a government approval). [See list, with sources in law reviews, in Gran’pa Jack No. 4 ]

A. The Second Amendment did not protect black people then, because(1) it was understood to limit the federal government’s power only and (2) black people were not considered citizens whose rights deserved to be protected. [Dred Scott decision, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) (Judge Taney observed that if blacks had the privileges and immunities of citizenship, then they would be able to freely possess and carry arms … unthinkable to Southern slave owners.)][Halbrook, pp. 98, 114-15]

B. The Second Amendment was designed by people who did not want to become slaves to their government, but they were unfortunately and tragically willing to permit private slavery in some states. Now that slavery is abolished, however, all citizens of all races should enjoy the Second Amendment’s legal protection against despotic government.

SIXTH: Several Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal have held that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right, but only a collective right of states to form a militia. The federal court decisions cite United States v. Miller as precedent. The 1939 Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller, did not make that ruling. Even in Miller, where only the prosecution filed a brief and the defendant’s position was not even briefed or argued to the Court, the Supreme Court held that the federal government could only regulate firearms that had no military purpose. [307 U.S. 174 (1939)] [See JPFO special report about Miller case]

  • A. Nowadays, gun prohibitionists want to illegalize firearms unless they have a “sporting purpose.” The “sporting purpose” idea was part of the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938. JPFO has shown that the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968 imported much of its organization, content, and phrasing, from the Nazi Weapons Law. [See … Zelman, Gateway to Tyranny]
  • B. In contrast, even under the U.S. v. Miller case, the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear military firearms. Learn how the federal courts deceptively and misleadingly employed the Miller decision to deny the individual right to keep and bear arms in Barnett, Can the Simple Cite Be Trusted?: Lower Court Interpretations of United States v. Miller and the Second Amendment, 26 Cumberland Law Review 961-1004 (1996).
  • C. A federal judge recently struck down a federal “gun control” statute as unconstitutional in United States v. Emerson, 46 F. Supp. 2d 598 (N.D. Tex. 1999). In his scholarly written opinion, District Judge Cummings extensively reviewed the law and historical foundations of the Second Amendment to conclude that the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment is an individual right. The Emerson decision remains pending an appeal in the Fifth Circuit as of this date.

Before a government can become a full-blown tyranny, the government must first disarm its citizens. The Founders of this nation, from their own experience, knew that when government goes bad, liberty evaporates and people die … unless the people are armed.

CHALLENGE TO AMERICANS

As you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

  • (1) Look at the enumerated powers of the federal government;
  • (2) Look at the express limitations on federal power as set forth in the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments;
  • (3) Ask yourself, where does the federal government get any power at all to regulate firearms?
  • (4) Ask yourself, why don’t the high school and college textbooks devote any time to the history, philosophical basis, and practical meaning of the Second Amendment?

And then consider that law students and future lawyers likewise have received precious little education about the Second Amendment.

Realize, too, that the judges know just about as little. Then imagine how little the average American knows — based on the average public school coverage of the Constitution.

The protection of our sacred right of self-defense against both petty criminals and oppressive government — the right of civilians to keep and bear arms — is in your hands.

*****

This article was published by JPFO, Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Heritage Action Steps Up In Arizona Senate Race After McConnell Pulls $8 Million From Masters thumbnail

Heritage Action Steps Up In Arizona Senate Race After McConnell Pulls $8 Million From Masters

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By Tristan Justice

On Monday, the Sentinel Action Fund announced $5 million to support Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters.

An independent super PAC aligned with Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is pumping money into the Arizona Senate race amid near-total abandonment by Republican leadership in this highly competitive race amid a currently 50-50 Senate.

On Monday, the Sentinel Action Fund announced $5 million to support Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters in the form of voter outreach efforts and television ad buys after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) pulled $8 million from the contest.

“We wanted to be there from a conservative standpoint,” said Jessica Anderson, the president of the Sentinel Action Fund, highlighting the group’s spending in Arizona, and Masters in particular, as a “clarion call for the conservative movement to come and support this candidate.”

While the group has also announced efforts to get involved with pivotal Senate races in Nevada and Georgia, Anderson emphasized “$5 million is so far our largest single expenditure that we have planned.”

In the final week of August, McConnell’s super PAC canceled nearly $8 million in ad buys for Arizona and demanded private entrepreneur and megadonor Peter Thiel step in to replace the lost funding. The money initially set aside for Masters will instead go to support J.D. Vance in Ohio.

Both Masters and Vance, who worked for Thiel prior to jumping into crowded Senate primaries, were backed by the billionaire venture capitalist with $15 million each during the party contests. McConnell is now demanding more money from Thiel, who has yet to spend on either in the general, to push the candidates across the November finish line.

The McConnell super PAC is driving more money from the Arizona Senate race, where Masters is down by 4 points in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls, to Ohio, where polls show Vance up by more than 2. In August, polling from the most reliable pollster of recent election cycles, the Trafalgar Group, showed Masters down by 4 points with Vance up by 5.

“McConnell told Thiel over the phone last week that Vance’s race in Ohio was proving more costly for the Senate Leadership Fund than anticipated,” the Washington Post reported on Aug. 31. McConnell added “that money was not unlimited and that there was a need for the billionaire to ‘come in, in a big way, in Arizona,’” an anonymous “person familiar with the conversation” reportedly told the Post.

Campaign finance data and recent electoral trends in each state, however, cast doubt on McConnell’s claims that Vance was in more desperate need of funds than Masters.

Former President Donald Trump carried Ohio comfortably by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020. Trump captured Arizona’s 11 electoral votes in 2016 by less than 4 points, and lost the state in 2020. Arizona’s two Senate seats also became filled by two Democrats for the first time since 1953 in 2020.

Data from OpenSecrets further shows Masters outraised by incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly 10 to 1, compared to Vance who has been outraised by Ohio Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan nearly 6 to 1.

McConnell’s decision to pull $8 million from Masters drew criticism from Senate rivals who called out the Republican leader for aiming to re-elect a minority the Kentucky lawmaker can control as opposed to a fractured majority. Masters pledged during the Arizona Republican Senate debate not to back McConnell for another term at the top of GOP leadership. In August, McConnell complained about candidate quality among his own party going into the fall midterms.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said on Fox News.

McConnell attempted to pre-emptively foil criticism over Arizona spending by also taking an axe to planned ads for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a key Senate ally who faces a tough challenge from Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka. Tshibaka has also promised not to support McConnell for another term in leadership.

McConnell canceled about $1.7 million in the relatively inexpensive Alaskan media market, although Murkowski maintains a steep financial advantage over the rest of the field with more than $9 million raised to Tshibaka’s less than $3.5 million, according to OpenSecrets. Murkowski is also running with the incumbent advantage amid a new system of ranked-choice voting.

Days after McConnell pulled ad spending on Masters in Arizona, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott blasted the minority leader in the Washington Examiner.

“We have great candidates with incredible backgrounds and ideas to make our country better,” Scott wrote. “Do I wish they had more money than their Democratic opponent? Of course. But we have great candidates, chosen by the voters in their states, and our job is to help each one of them win.”

Last week, McConnell attempted an effort at capitulation by announcing he would attend a second fundraiser for Masters sometime in September. Showing up to an event, however, is far from the same as putting $8 million into a competitive race.

Anderson made clear during her interview with The Federalist that the seven-figure bid to bolster Masters in Arizona was not a response to McConnell’s decision to strip spending.

“[The] announcement today is a response to grassroots activists with the Sentinel,” Anderson said, emphasizing Arizona has always been on their map.

In July, the Sentinel Action Fund ran a $400,000 ad campaign that attacked Kelly’s embrace of President Joe Biden’s energy agenda fueling record-high gas prices.

“I think we were created for moments like this when the party is divided on who to support. We can come in and support the conservative candidate who is going to come in and lead the state’s voters,” Anderson added.

The $5 million-dollar campaign dump is a likely relief to grassroots Republicans aiming to bring down Kelly and flip the Senate.

“Jessica Anderson and her team at Heritage Action have built a serious and formidable operation and are making the right call by investing in Blake Masters,” Terry Schilling, the president of the conservative American Principles Project, told The Federalist. “Blake is one of the few politicians who will actually deliver for families and it’s why groups like American Principles Project and Heritage are each pledging 7-figure investments to help him get elected. This election will be the ‘Revenge of the Parents.’ Anti-family Democrats should be very worried.”

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Socialism and the Great Reset thumbnail

Socialism and the Great Reset

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By Michael Anton

America must sink so the world may rise.

“The following is an excerpt from Michael Walsh’s forthcoming book, Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order, which will be published by Bombardier Books and be available October 18, 2022. Walsh has gathered a series of essays from among eighteen of the most eminent thinkers, writers, and journalists—including the American Mind’s own James Poulos, as well as Claremont Senior Fellows Michael Anton and the late Angelo Codevilla—to provide the first major salvo in the intellectual resistance to the sweeping restructuring of the western world by globalist elites. See Michael Walsh’s original entry here.”  Editors at The American Mind.

It has become increasingly common to hear those on what we may call the conventional Right claim that the main threat facing the historic American nation and the American way of life is “socialism.” These warnings have grown with the rise of the so-called “Great Reset,” ostensibly a broad effort to reduce inequality, cool the planet (i.e., “address climate change”), and cure various social ills, all by decreasing alleged “overconsumption.” In other words, its mission is to persuade people, at least in the developed West, to accept lower standards of living in order to create a more just and “equitable” world. Since the conservative mind, not unreasonably, associates lower standards of living with “socialism,” many conservatives naturally intuit that the Great Reset must somehow be “socialist.”

I believe this fear is at least partly misplaced and that the warnings it gives rise to, however well-meaning, are counterproductive because they deflect attention from the truer, greater threat: specifically, the cabal of bankers, techies, corporate executives, politicians, senior bureaucrats, academics, and pundits who coalesce around the World Economic Forum and seek to change, reduce, restrict, and homogenize the Western way of life—but only for ordinary people. Their own way of life, along with the wealth and power that define it, they seek to entrench, augment, deepen, and extend.

This is why a strict or literal definition of “socialism”—public or government ownership and control of the means of production in order to equalize incomes and wealth across the population—is inapt of our situation. The Great Reset quietly but unmistakably redefines “socialism” to allow and even promote wealth and power concentration in certain hands. In the decisive sense, then, the West’s present economic system—really, its overarching regime—is the opposite of socialistic.

Yet there are ways in which this regime might still be tentatively described as “socialist,” at least as it operates for those not members in good standing of the Davoisie. If the Great Reset is allowed to proceed as planned, wealth for all but the global overclass will be equalized, or at least reduced for the middle and increased for the bottom. Many of the means used to accomplish this goal will be “socialistic,” broadly understood. But to understand both the similarities and the differences, we must go back to socialism’s source, which is the thought of Karl Marx and his colleague, financial backer, and junior partner, Friedrich Engels.

That thought is most accessible in Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, the jointly authored Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), and Engels’s pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” (1880). Marxism’s detailed account of economics is fully developed in the monumental Capital (Das Kapital), published in three volumes between 1867 and 1894. Marx and Engels do not claim to be innovators. They insist rather that they merely discovered and explicate the “scientific” theory of socialism, whose true roots are to be found in the unfolding development of “history.”

Marxism

A word ought to be said about the difference between “communism” and “socialism.” The distinction is not always clear in Marx’s and Engels’s works. Often, they use both terms interchangeably. Engels, especially, seems to elide the two, particularly in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” But we may perhaps take as authoritative the distinction made in the Manifesto. There, the two authors contrast true communism with various forms of socialism—feudal, petty-bourgeois, German, conservative, and critical-utopian—all of which they find wanting, at best milestones on the road to communism.

It is unnecessary for our purposes here to recount Marx’s and Engels’s distinctions between the various forms of socialism. Suffice it to say that, in their account, all of those varieties constitute cynical or at any rate inconsequential concessions to the lower classes, intended to stave off the emergence of full communism and to preserve ruling class status and privileges. The “socialism” with which we are most familiar today—high and progressive taxation, a generous welfare state, nationalization of key services such as health care, an expansive list of state-guaranteed “rights,” combined with the retention of private property and private ownership of most means of production—Marx and Engels deride as “bourgeois socialism,” i.e., not only not the real thing but fundamentally closer to bourgeois capitalism than to true socialism, much less communism.

Marxism and “History”

For Marx and Engels, the ground of both socialism and communism is “history,” understood not as an account of past events, conditions, structures, and trends but as an inexorable movement toward a final, fully rational state, with “state” understood as both “state of being” and the formal machinery of government. The discovery of this notion of “history” is implicit in Rousseau’s account of man’s transition from the state of nature—man’s original and natural, in the sense of “default,” condition—to civil society. For Rousseau, that transition was both a decline and one-way: there is no going back. This change in man’s situation, which putatively changes his nature, is the core of what would come to be called “historicism”: the idea that human nature is not constant but variable according to the historical situation. In this understanding, “history,” and not any purported but nonexistent permanent human nature as posited by all prior philosophy, both determines the organization of society and supplies the standard by which man should live.

For Rousseau, man’s transition from the state of nature to civil society is caused by the discovery or development of his rationality, a latent quality always present in humanity but not active in the state of nature, in which men live more or less as beasts. What distinguishes man from the beasts is his freedom, his awareness of and ability to act on that freedom, and the potential to develop his rationality. The “unlocking” of that rationality is perhaps inevitable but at the same

time accidental or inadvertent. Once unlocked, human rationality inevitably leads to the invention of private property, which is the basis of all politics. “The first person who, having fenced off ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society,” Rousseau writes in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men.

Private property necessarily gives rise to institutions designed to protect and defend it, and these become not only the instruments of civil society but also sources of inequality and misery. Implicit in Rousseau’s thought is the unsettling notion that, once this historical process begins, it has no end or rational direction. History is driven by contradiction and conflict—though, he asserts, human beings can still live more or less happily if isolated from urban wealth and corruption. But such circumstances are rare and the products of chance. History in the main is the endless replacement of one set of standards and modes of life for new ones, one set of masters for another, ad infinitum.

Rousseau’s successors, principally Kant and Hegel, accept the notion that history is driven by conflict but posit that the process nonetheless has a rational direction. History’s inherent and inevitable conflicts point forward and upward toward a final state in which all of history’s contradictions are resolved. It is this alleged insight—popularized in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Francis Fukuyama—upon which Marx and Engels build their political and economic theory.

For Marxism, the fundamental fact of human life—what sets man apart from the other living beings—is conscious production and consumption. Marx partly follows Rousseau in believing that there was a period when man could, essentially, “live off the land,” on what he could find and gather. But whereas for Rousseau, man’s transition from the state of nature to civil society was an avoidable or at any rate accidental and unnecessary tragedy, for Marx it was inevitable and, eventually, will turn out all to the good.

Unlike producing animals (for instance, bees) man’s production is conscious. He knows what he does and why he does it. But this consciousness does not arise from any innate rationality but rather from necessity. Population increase forces man to produce—that is, to manipulate nature rather than simply living off its bounty—in order to survive. (The implication is that nature is barely bountiful enough to support a limited number of primitive men but must be “conquered” in order to support the inevitably larger numbers that will emerge absent some external force that consistently culls the population.) This turn to production represents a fundamental change in man’s being and is the first step in his historical development.

From this point forward, the character of man and of every society he inhabits is set by the mode(s) of production. Such modes not only determine but explain, literally, everything about human life: man’s past, present, and future; his theology, morality, and worldview; and the underlying metaphysics and ontology of reality. Thus can Marx claim that his theory is comprehensive…

 is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.

*****

This article was published by the American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Make Democrats Defend Their Abortion Extremism thumbnail

Make Democrats Defend Their Abortion Extremism

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By David Harsanyi

The modern left isn’t pro-choice anymore.

Senator Lindsey Graham has introduced the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act” which would limit abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy. The bill includes exceptions for rape and incest, offers protections for the woman’s life, and prohibits the prosecution of those seeking abortions. By any objective historical standard, it’s a moderate bill. And yes, it’s also just a political stunt meant to highlight the Democrats’ intractable position on the issue. Good.

According to WPA Intelligence, a GOP political consulting firm, “battleground state voters” say Republicans are more extreme on abortion than Democrats by a 51 to 32 percent margin. It’s unsurprising. For one thing, panicky Republicans are cowardly and ineffective at making the pro-life case. For another, the media not only avoid accurately defining the left’s maximalist position – abortion on demand, for any reason, until the moment of birth, funded by taxpayers – but they would rather write risible “fact” “checks” obscuring that reality than ask a Democrat to defend it. And it’s never going to change.

So let Democrats treat a Republican bill that’s more permissive than abortion laws in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain, as the coming of the Republic of Gilead. Within the European Union, only Sweden (at 18 weeks) and the Netherlands (at 22) feature laws more lenient than the one Senate Republicans are proposing. But, of course, it’s not as if Democrats would accept Swedish or Dutch limits, either.

Of course, Democrats have opposed 20-week heartbeat bills in the Senate on three occasions. The left supports no limits on terminating a pregnancy—not at the detection of a heartbeat, not at viability, and sometimes, not even after birth. Not long after then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northman infamously described the negligent homicide of an unwanted child, Senate Democrats blocked Ben Sasse’s unanimous consent on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act – a bill that did nothing to limit abortion but simply protected babies lucky enough to survive the procedure. Not a single coherent argument for opposing the specifics of the bill was offered.

These days, Democrats, led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, are peddling odious legislation like “The Stop Anti-Abortion Discrimination Act,” which would crack down on crisis pregnancy centers, and charities that offer women material, emotional, and mental health services. The law would fine centers, which have become targets of vandalism and fire-bombings since the Dobbs decision, $100,000 or half their total revenue, for spreading “disinformation” related to abortion—a political euphemism for disagreeing with progressives. The bill isn’t only an attack on decency, but the First Amendment, as well.

“Today, Senator Graham introduced a national ban on abortion which would strip away women’s rights in all 50 states,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed. “This bill is wildly out of step with what Americans believe.” Is it? Pollsters love to ask irrelevant questions aimed at the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as if voters have contemplated its constitutional dimensions. But whenever pollsters bother to ask voters specifics about the procedure, things become complicated. And nearly every poll that’s bothered to ask voters about post-first trimester bans finds more support than opposition. Which is why Democrats (and many journalists) have taken to calling Graham’s bill a “federal abortion ban” rather than a “15-week abortion ban.” If the ban was as deeply unpopular as Democrats claim, they wouldn’t need to do this.

The left likes to claim that post-15-week abortions are incredibly rare, and that when they do occur they are mostly to support women whose lives are in danger. Graham’s bill doesn’t ban abortion for women experiencing “a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” What it does is close Roe’s allowance for late-term abortion due to emotional “distress.” These abortions might be a small percentage of the whole, but they are not rare. There are likely around 10,000 viable or nearly viable unborn aborted every year and probably around 50,000 after 15 weeks. Those abortions are not predominately about health. As the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute once found (it avoids the topic nowadays), a majority of women who seek these abortions “do not do so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute also found that medical literature shows that a majority of late-term procedures are not performed for “maternal health complications or lethal fetal anomalies discovered late in pregnancy.”

Not that the American left has shown any inclination to limit or even discourage the termination of the viable unborn for convenience’s sake. The modern left isn’t pro-choice anymore. It’s pro-abortion. Make them own it.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Religious Individuals Versus Collectivist Control thumbnail

Religious Individuals Versus Collectivist Control

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By Bruce W. Davidson

A century ago, Princeton scholar J. Gresham Machen remarked that “historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. . . It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world.”

Doing that very thing, in California Grace Community Church successfully battled the county and state governments after resuming face-to-face worship services during a lockdown. Similarly, members of the orthodox Jewish community of New York City clashed with the authorities over a refusal to cancel gatherings. However, dissident religious people seem to be in the minority; most conformed to such draconian government decrees.

One significant gift of Judaism and Christianity is the concept that an individual is responsible and valuable apart from the group. As Larry Siedentop explains in his book Inventing the Individual, Western civilization’s moral and legal foundations owe a great deal to that legacy. Before that, the ancient Romans and Greeks considered loyalty to the family clan to be an absolute religious duty.

The main responsibility of family members was to make offerings to their ancestors, who otherwise might be transformed into vengeful demons inflicting harm on their descendants. A similar but less demanding expectation continues to pervade a number of Asian societies today. Every August, the Obon festival in Japan ritually welcomes ancestral spirits to their homes.

The Greek city-state eventually evolved out of the family clan. Then people had value only insofar as they were connected to the city and served its interests. The advent of Judeo-Christian religiosity into the Greco-Roman world undermined this concept and replaced it with the idea that each individual had distinct importance as well as personal responsibility before God.

As Salman Rushdie expressed it, such thinking helps to undergird “the basic idea of all morality: that individuals are responsible for their actions.” In contrast, the modern collectivist mindset often excuses individual wrongdoing as long as it is carried out in the name of some greater social good. 

Unfortunately, the religious individual has often not only had to contend against secular collectivism but also against a religious variety. Martin Luther famously came to oppose the Roman Catholic Church authorities of his time. Faced with the demand that he submit to the Church’s official teaching, he declared in his defense that he dared not set aside personal convictions, declaring that “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.” 

The persistent, worldwide phenomenon of religious collectivism still retains a great deal of power and influence. In many places, religion has functioned as a powerful force to bind and control. The high priest/king of pagan societies was often considered an incarnate deity. As a typical example, the god-king Pharaoh had the power to kill, enslave, or free from bondage. During World War II, Zen Buddhism became ensnared in the militaristic, self-sacrificing national cult of Japan, leading one scholar to call it “The Zen Cult of Death.”

Likewise, in his book, Preachers Present Arms, Ray Abrams chronicles how many church leaders in the US promoted the idea that Americans had a religious duty to participate in the first world war, viewing it as a kind of “holy war.” Moreover, from its very beginnings collectivist allegiance has been an essential component of the thinking of Islam – often expressed in military endeavors.

Originally, the early Christians did not aim at controlling the unbelieving community around them. Jesus’s well-known distinction between one’s allegiances to God and Caesar (Mark 12:17) is one scriptural basis for that. However, the pagan tribal cults of Europe were eventually replaced by the powerful medieval Roman Catholic church organization. In that culture, the efficacy of the sacraments depended not on personal faith but rather on the church institution as God’s corporate conduit of blessing. An individual’s salvation depended on being under the umbrella of that sacral organization, and the church also had the power of the sword to enforce membership.

This religious and political power corrupted the Roman church. When Lord Acton stated his famous dictum “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he knew that it also had been true of Roman Catholicism. He authored a book about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August, 1572, in which tens of thousands of Protestant Huguenots in France met their deaths at the instigation of church and state authorities.

Even in the English-speaking world, it took a long time to return to the New Testament idea that Christianity is ultimately a matter of individual conscience and commitment. As one example, the Presbyterian Westminster Confession was originally created by the English Parliament as a creed to be forcibly imposed on everyone in England. Imprisonment, fines, or possibly death would have been the lot of resistant non-Presbyterians.

For the well-being of society, it was thought that everyone needed to conform to a single creed and church polity. Thanks to later political developments, that plan was never implemented. Among the thirteen original American colonies, the Baptist Roger Williams was the first to guarantee religious freedom for everyone in Rhode Island.

In those blessed places that managed to obtain the freedom of individuals from collectivist control, it has taken centuries of struggle. Those who now heedlessly throw that freedom away do not realize what they are doing. As Herbert Hoover once put it, “Salvation will not come to us out of the wreckage of individualism.”

Bruce Davidson is professor of humanities at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan.

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Bombshell: DOJ Conceals Records About Biden’s Use Of Federal Agencies To Influence Elections thumbnail

Bombshell: DOJ Conceals Records About Biden’s Use Of Federal Agencies To Influence Elections

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By Shawn Fleetwood

Editors Note: The argument about election integrity seems to break into two separate, but related areas. Some are concerned about cheating, which is literally altering the outcome of elections by manipulating the vote. But more subtle, and more difficult to quantify, is the use of both private companies and Federal agencies, to use their influence to change the outcome of elections. One could in theory have a perfectly honest accounting of the vote, but have the outcome changed because private companies and Federal agencies use their money and power to change who shows up at the polls and what voters have as information to use in making decisions? Moreover, the government is doing a lot by itself, and using private corporations, to alter what you hear about issues, which also is a subtle, but powerful way, to alter the outcome of elections. Private companies and certainly Federal agencies should not become the vehicles for political parties and their partisan positions. Private companies of course are free to contribute to whomever they wish, but they should not be paying election officials. Government agencies use tax dollars, collected from citizens from different political perspectives. They should not be used as a tool of politics because taxes are taken by force from all of us and it is not the function of these agencies to engage in Democrat political efforts.

The DOJ is concealing documents related to Biden’s executive order that directed agencies to meddle in nationwide elections.


The Department of Justice (DOJ) is concealing key documents related to President Joe Biden’s March 2021 order that directed executive agencies to develop plans for federal interference in state election administration.

On Sept. 8, the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) was scheduled to receive a series of government records from the DOJ that detailed how the agency is complying with Executive Order 14019. That order mandated all federal departments to “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” Among these included the DOJ’s 15-page “strategic plan” on how the agency intends to comply with Biden’s executive order.

Instead of releasing the documents, FGA requested pursuant to federal open records laws, however, the Biden DOJ released only a few records pertaining to the order, most of which were heavily redacted.

In one of the emails dated June 11, 2021, for example, Special Assistant to the Deputy White House Counsels Devontae Freeland writes to a redacted list of administration officials about the submission of June 15 interim reports regarding Biden’s executive order.

“Thank you for your work on the Promoting Access to Voting EO implementation plans,” Freeland wrote. “The interim reports, which are due this Tuesday 6/15, can be submitted by email [redacted] as a Word doc. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or concerns.”

In a separate email chain dated June 21, 2021, Freeland discusses a proposed Zoom meeting between members of the administration and numerous “election officials” and “nonprofit organizations” engaged in “voting rights advocacy” and those with “expertise in reaching out to … particular populations of voters who may be more difficult to reach.”

According to Freeland, the goal of the meeting was to purportedly garner “recommendations” and “thoughts on best practices” on how to best fulfill the requests in Biden’s order.

“We believe that these sessions will provide some helpful feedback as you further refine the strategic plans due to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy on September 23, 2021,” the email reads.

While the emails don’t specify which election officials or nonprofits took part in the meeting, Freeland does say that the administration reached out to “10 pragmatic state and local officials, from different parts of the country, serving very different constituencies,” with the group including “Democrats and Republicans and those with no partisan affiliation.”

“The American people deserve to know if the Biden Administration’s unprecedented action is fair and non-partisan, or if it is designed to help one political party over the other,” said FGA President and CEO Tarren Bragdon in a statement. “Why are they ignoring public record requests for strategic plans on federal voter registration efforts? Why are they treating these documents like they are classified information dealing with nuclear weapons? Midterms are approaching, and the DOJ’s failure to disclose information raises troubling issues. They need to reveal these public documents to keep our elections fair.”

FGA sued the DOJ in April 2022 after the agency failed to respond to the organization’s July 2021 open records requests related to Biden’s order. Nearly a year later, on July 12, 2022, a federal district court judge ordered the DOJ to turn over the documents before the midterm elections. The DOJ did so, but with heavy redactions that defy the intent of the order.

In addition to the Sept. 8 document dump, FGA is also scheduled to receive documents from the DOJ on Sept. 20 and Oct. 20, with the group set to publish such records on Sept. 27 and Oct. 25, respectively.

Additional organizations that have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration for refusing to comply with open records requests related to Biden’s directive include the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) and the Center for Renewing America (CRA). Filed against agencies including the Departments of Labor, Defense, and Education in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the litigation has yet to compel the administration to turn over federal records that would show how public employees are carrying out Biden’s order.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

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Climate and COVID ‘Science’

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By Donald J. Boudreaux

Physicist and former CalTech provost Steven Koonin’s superb 2021 book, Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, busts many popular myths about climate change. Koonin is clear that global temperatures are indeed rising, and that some of this rise in temperatures is caused by human activity. But Koonin warns – and he marshals much data to justify his warnings – that what we really know about the details behind and beyond these large facts about climate change, and about efforts to arrest it, is surprisingly tentative. Indeed, such knowledge is often so skimpy as to be non-existent.

Our relatively meager amount of knowledge about climate change, as well as about the likely consequences of different policies to deal with it, is surprising not because of any recent discoveries that cast new-found doubt on what was once legitimately believed to be ample knowledge. No, our relatively meager amount of knowledge about climate matters has always been meager, yet this ‘meagerness’ has been consistently ignored by prominent politicians, journalists, and other ‘elite’ molders of public opinion.

A public frightened into believing that some collective calamity is in the offing is a public more eager for, or at least more docile in the face of, authoritarian efforts marketed as necessary to prevent the calamity.

With the turn of almost every page of Unsettled? I was struck by the ominous parallels between the mainstream narrative on the climate and the mainstream narrative on COVID. Pointing out such parallels wasn’t at all Koonin’s purpose; in fact, I suspect that he himself took no notice of these parallels. And, of course, I’d earlier been alerted by other writers to these parallels. But the length and reality of these parallels weren’t driven home to me until I’d read Koonin’s tract. Each and every one of the following attitudes – which I distill from my reading of Koonin’s book and from my immersion over the past 30 months in all things COVID – is prominent in matters of COVID as well as in matters of the climate.

Humanity is doomed to suffer gravely unless the government takes drastic, indeed, unprecedented corrective action and does so immediately!

Nothing – no other goal, aspiration, hope, or concern – nothing is as important as doing all that we can to reduce as much as is physically possible our exposure to the toxic substance that poses an existential threat to humanity! Therefore, there’s no need to account for the ‘costs’ and other collateral harms that might arise from drastic corrective action, for none of these costs and harms, even if they’re real, can possibly compare to the costs and harms that will befall us if we don’t take in full measure the prescribed drastic action!

The present emergency demands decisive interventions that are neither delayed nor diluted by trifling concerns, such as the sanctity of private property rights or the desire to avoid overreach by the government’s executive branch!

The problem is one that can be correctly diagnosed only by scientific experts. Fortunately, such a diagnosis has been confidently made. And so to save humanity we must put aside our petty individual self-interests and for the greater good do as we are instructed by the experts! Humanity’s very survival demands that we all obey the Science, for only the Science can light the path from a dark and dangerous today into a shining and safe tomorrow!

The Science reveals that there is one and only one path to our salvation. Everyone must follow the One Path! Those who insist on other paths would not only destroy themselves but all of humanity!

Fortunately, the Science is clear, complete, and settled! Therefore, anyone who challenges the Science – anyone who dares to challenge the prediction that catastrophe will occur unless the government overhauls society and the economy as instructed by the Science and the Scientists – is a slack-jawed ignoramus, a sociopathic apologist for plutocrats, or a dangerously benighted ideologue! And so there’s nothing to be gained by allowing these dissenting voices to speak! Indeed, dissenting voices must be silenced lest they lure the unsuspecting masses into a self-destructive skepticism of the Science!

To keep to a minimum the number of anti-social renegades who insist on acting contrary to the counsel of the Science, the Scientists and their champions in government and the media must, sad to say, routinely simplify or exaggerate – and occasionally, alas, even to falsify – the public messaging. Taking such liberties with the strict, literal truth is, of course, not to lie; only a rube would think it to be so. The taking of such liberties with the strict, literal truth furthers the higher Truth. Taking such liberties is a necessary means of promoting the greater good by ensuring that the noble masses, simple-minded creatures that they are, aren’t misled by pointless doubts and irrelevant nuances to behave self-destructively.

These parallels of public discussions about the climate and public discussions about COVID are indeed real and ominous.

The passage in Koonin’s book that, more than any other, drove home to me the reality of these ominous parallels appears on page 171:

Creating alarming headlines through highly uncertain projections of the future is one thing, but promoting the specter of climate-related deaths by distorting existing data is quite another. A 2019 article in Foreign Affairs by the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, was titled “Climate Change Is Already Killing Us.” Yet the text doesn’t deliver on the catchy title. Astoundingly, the article conflates deaths due to ambient and household air pollution (which cause an estimated 100 per 100,000 premature deaths each year, or about one-eighth of total deaths from all causes) with deaths due to human-induced climate change. The World Health Organization itself has said that indoor air pollution in poor countries – the result of cooking with wood and animal and crop waste – is the most serious environmental problem in the world, affecting up to three billion people. This is not the result of climate change. It’s the result of poverty. That pollution does indeed affect the climate … but pollution deaths aren’t caused by a changing climate; it’s the pollution itself that kills. Such brazen misinformation by the WHO’s leadership is particularly upsetting for its potential to diminish confidence in the organization’s public health mission.

Readers might recall that Dr. Ghebreyesus, seated in his high perch, has a habit of predicting calamity from COVID, even well into the virus’s decline in lethality. This dishonest or incompetent (I’m not sure which) performance by one of the world’s supposed leading public-health officials is, obviously, part of a longer pattern. The pattern is ominous.

Science is an especially sweet and nutritious fruit of the Enlightenment. But an even sweeter and more nutritious fruit is the recognition that truth – including, but not limited to, scientific truth – is only reliably approached without ever being absolutely and forever secured, and approached only through open inquiry, discussion, debate, and tolerance for dissenting opinions and perspectives.

Too many elite intellectuals and public officials today – and, I fear, also too many ordinary men and women – have lost sight of the fact that science and reason are tools for improving our understanding and for supplying us with some information that’s useful for making the complicated and inescapably value-laden trade-offs that, in this vale, we must make. The belief that science is a source of complete and godlike knowledge is not merely mistaken, it’s a toxic fuel of authoritarianism when it’s combined with the false understanding of social problems as being a science project to be ‘solved’ by persons in power.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

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The Blood Red Speech

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By Neland Nobel

President Biden, when he is not on vacation, is changing the political landscape…and not for the better. A candidate who billed himself as an “uniter” has used perhaps the most divisive, may we say, incendiary language of any President in recent memory, or perhaps in history.

With strange blood-red lighting, he walked with his wife to the podium to the sounds of Hail To The Chief in front of Independence Hall.  After kissing his wife and struggling with a phelm-filled throat, his demeanor changed. Speaking with a constant scowl and often dual clenched fists, he spoke with Marine guards flanking him. He tore into what he referred to as MAGA Republicans as a threat to the nation, which is roughly half the country.

His whole body language and rhetoric were threatening. Since he has only about 38% approval rating, this made almost two-thirds of the country feel not very safe.

To Biden, his fellow Americans are enemies, not rivals, and not opponents. We are enemies, and despicable ones at that.

“But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country,” Biden said.

“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” he said.

Biden continued, saying, “They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.”

The inflammatory language continued to roll on for over 26 minutes referring to  “Republicans” 16 times, “MAGA” 13 times, and naming former President Donald Trump specifically three times.

What was doubly odd was this was an official Presidential address, where he represented the highest office in the country, and was not a fundraising or campaign speech.  In fact, he seemed to be campaigning against Trump, even though the former President is not a candidate at this time and we are in midst of a Congressional election.  He did this representing his elected office, which is very revolutionary.

The implication of using his office is that the entire power of the state is now on his side exclusively and because of the nature of his political opposition, the instruments of the state can legitimately be used against those who disagree with him. It was positively Stalinesque.

Outside of the hateful rhetoric,  he wants to run against Trump, rather than defend his own record. In other parts of the speech, he clearly was running against the Supreme Court.

As far as being a threat to the Republic, Biden continued on the course the Democrats have taken to exaggerate the buffoonery of the January 6th Capitol riot (remember the guy with the horns quietly talking to the guards) to claim all opposition to his programs is a threat to the country and the Constitution. This gets ominously close to claiming those who disagree with him are treasonous.

Commentator Matt Walsh called this “pre-genocide” rhetoric.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley suggests the speech was written by quack historian Jon Meacham, a Vanderbilt professor known for his anti-Trump ravings on Twitter and comically co-chair of the “Vanderbilt Project on Unity and Democracy”. If true, the word irony just does not seem strong enough.

But Presidents choose what to use among the things their speech writers give them. So even if Meacham is the author of some of these hateful words, Biden made the choice to use them. Biden is the President and must be held accountable for what his office does and says.

The next day, he walked back his remarks, but his press secretary continued the attack, and then Biden himself followed through again with his MAGA is a threat to the Republic rhetoric. So except for one day of hesitation, he continued on his rampage.

This can’t be dismissed as the ravings of an old man. Earlier, he had said the country’s greatest threat was “white supremacy” and even took steps to hunt down Biden dissenters in the military.  You might recall he said the whole reason he ran for President was “Charlottesville”, and the lie that Trump said there are “good people” among the racists. He was referring of course, to good people who did not think statues should be torn down. It is now in the fog of memory that what prompted the riot was the tearing down of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Of late, Biden has used the term “semi-fascists” to describe those that don’t agree with him. While the term is loaded with historical pejoratives, in fact, Biden’s own economic policy and cozy relationship with big pharma, big tech, big green industries, and big media, is much closer to the Mussolini model.

No, Biden and the Democrats have chosen to conduct their political dialogue on a level that demonizes and dehumanizes Republicans and they did so some time ago. The Blood Red speech is simply the most recent and egregious example.

A few Republican leaders have struck back, but not nearly enough of them and not nearly strong enough. That makes Biden more likely to continue his woke jihad.

Republicans should make it clear that they will not tolerate these kinds of smears. They need to publicly challenge Democratic candidates if they agree with Biden’s view of his fellow Americans. Moreover, there are unstable people out there that believe such things and we already have had deranged Democrats shoot up Republican officials at a softball game. Besides, it is hard to conduct a civil dialogue when your opponent is calling you evil.

While Biden is trying to make the Congressional elections all about Trump and MAGA, Republicans need to make this all about stopping Biden. The man is ignoring the law, and accusing Republicans of destroying the country, all the while he is getting the bulk of his agenda passed. Republicans have been too passive in responding vigorously to the constant accusations that they are white supremacists, racists, and neo-nazis. That such people exist in small numbers in the country is undeniable, but they are not represented well in the Republican Party. On the contrary, the Klan was formed as the militant wing of the Democrats and has remained so for the bulk of their history.

In the case of Charlottesville, there is not enough discussion about the role of professional agitators actually associated with the left. Only Dinesh D’Sousa and a few others have called attention to this and the role leftists played in leadership. The leadership of the rioters was not conservative Republicans.

The only way to stop a continuation of this ruinous rule and his assault on half the nation is to block Biden by taking back both houses of Congress. That is by far the best response to all these wreckless racial charges against Republicans. And taking Congress back may be the only way to protect the Supreme Court.

If Democrats can work themselves into such a lather even while they successfully push their agenda, Lord knows what Democrats might do if Republicans were really effective at stopping them.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Four Myths About National Conservatism You Should Stop Believing thumbnail

Four Myths About National Conservatism You Should Stop Believing

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By David Brog

Within a few short years, we’ve become a full-fledged movement. It’s time to set the record straight on some myths about what we believe.

This Sunday, many of the most important names in American conservatism will be gathering in Miami for the third annual National Conservatism conference. Within a few short years, we’ve gone from a vague tendency to a full-fledged movement. No discussion of conservative lanes fails to mention the NatCons.

Unfortunately, some of the competing conservative camps would rather delegitimize us than debate us. Forget our opponents on the left; our erstwhile allies on the right have been spreading myths about who we are and what we believe. It’s time to set the record straight.

After Iraq and Afghanistan, most of the country — both right and left — are far more reluctant to send our troops to fight foreign wars. Don’t blame the NatCons for this; blame neocon overreach.

The new consensus is to engage abroad only when we identify clear threats to our national security. But this still leaves enormous room for debate about what constitutes such a threat and how to respond to such threats.

As opposed to the stereotype, the NatCon movement is home to a broad spectrum of opinions on these issues. There are those like Fox News host Tucker Carlson who urge us to concentrate on the most dangerous looming threat — China — rather than being distracted by what they view as lesser challenges. That’s not isolation; that’s focus.

I and many other NatCons recognize a broader cast of enemies, including Iran and Russia. The solution we propose, however, is not to send American troops abroad to confront them. We instead recommend identifying and supporting allies who are willing to confront these enemies on our behalf. We see strengthening allies like Japan, South Korea, India, Israel, and Ukraine as the best way to protect our interests abroad. That’s not isolation. That’s the one form of internationalism that may well survive our Middle Eastern debacles.

Myth #2: NatCons Oppose Free Markets

I have yet to meet a NatCon who doesn’t revere the free market as the engine of our prosperity. But we see the free market as the best means to an end and not an end in itself. We’re therefore willing to depart from orthodox laissez-faire when the national interest requires it.

Market intervention becomes especially important when supposedly free trade isn’t free at all. Many of the Founders, for example, recognized that Great Britain was manipulating free markets by subsidizing its domestic industries and then protecting them through tariffs. They understood that Great Britain would employ these tools to crush American manufacturing in the cradle, condemning us to be a supplier of raw materials for British factories.

In response, our first secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, advocated an industrial policy that included subsidies for infant industries along with protective tariffs. His policies were later championed by Henry Clay and were ultimately implemented to their fullest by President Abraham Lincoln. By the close of the 19th century, American industry was beginning to surpass that of Great Britain.

Many NatCons see a parallel between British abuse of free trade in prior centuries and Chinese practices today. Thus we too call for a wise industrial policy and protective tariffs to level the playing field. This may betray the views of some Austrian economists. But it fulfills the free market vision of our most commerce-oriented Founders.

Myth #3: ‘NatCon’ Is Just Another Word for Trumpist

We’re focused on policy, not personalities. You’ll find no hero worship or life-size cut-outs at our events.

Many of us supported President Donald Trump and voted for him twice. We give him credit for moving our nationalist agenda from the conservative fringes to its vital center. I and many of my colleagues were conservative pariahs until Trump mainstreamed our policy preferences.

That being said, we welcome any politician who champions all or even part of our agenda. Among the speakers featured prominently at our conferences are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Josh Hawley. If you held a presidential straw poll at NatCon, I have no idea who would win it. That’s exactly the way it should be.

Myth #4: NatCons Are White Nationalists with Better PR

We both have the word “nationalist” in our name, but that’s where the similarity ends.

From our very first days, we’ve told white nationalists not to attend our events. I publicized the ban during the first plenary session of our first conference by declaring, “We are nationalists, not white nationalists. If anyone here tonight believes that being an American has anything to do with the color of someone’s skin, please leave. There’s the door. Your ideas are not welcome here.” No flirting with white nationalism here.

We’re used to the left shouting “racist” to shut down dissent. It’s disappointing — and telling — when our critics on the right stoop to the same tactic.

*****

The article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

New York Banker: Gun, Ammunition Purchase Code ‘answers the call of millions’ thumbnail

New York Banker: Gun, Ammunition Purchase Code ‘answers the call of millions’

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By Steve Bittenbender

Editors’ Note:  There are a number of highly disturbing trends embedded in this article. First and foremost, is the ability of Democrats to make an end run around the legislative process by engaging highly regulated industries for their cause. Whether it be electric vehicles from GM, suppression of free speech by Facebook and Twitter, or now highly regulated banks creating a national firearm registry; Democrats are getting what they want without the representatives of the people voting. They do this openly while criticizing others for threatening “democracy.” Secondly, the alliance of big business with the government truly would make Mussolini proud, since that was among the key ingredients of Italian-style fascism. Thirdly, it shows no amount of evidence will convince Progressives of their folly. Most guns used in the commission of crimes are stolen and are not purchased using a credit card from legitimate dealers. The law-abiding public buys at gun stores, not hardened criminals. At the margin, this will likely hardly make a dent in crime, especially since the same Democrats are reducing or eliminating bail, freeing dangerous criminals early, and joining with Black Lives Matter and other groups in denigrating and de-funding police forces. Democrats are turning our major cities into hellholes. This all makes the average citizen need to have a gun for self-protection. But now, his or her private purchases will be monitored by the banking system, which is a weaponization of the banking industry by the Democrat party. Be sure to view the video by Jason Riley in the video section.  It would seem their goal is to leave us all vulnerable to criminals, as pictured above.

The president and CEO of the New York-based bank that pushed for a specific credit card code for gun retailers have claimed victory in the wake of the International Organization for Standardization’s approval of that request last week.

“We all have to do our part to stop gun violence,” Amalgamated Bank’s Priscilla Sims Brown said in a statement from Guns Down America.

Critics say she and the ISO have done little.

“The ISO’s decision to create a firearm-specific code is nothing more than a capitulation to anti-gun politicians and activists bent on eroding the rights of law-abiding Americans one transaction at a time,” Lars Dalseide, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, told The Center Square. “This is not about tracking or prevention or any virtuous motivation – it’s about creating a national registry of gun owners.”

On its website, Amalgamated bills itself as “America’s Socially Responsible Bank.” Gun safety and anti-violence are among 10 social causes the bank pursues, along with pro-labor, pro-choice, and climate issues as well as immigrant, minority, and LGBTQ+ rights.

As part of its gun safety crusade, Amalgamated says it does not offer loans to “gun, nuclear weapon or ammunition manufacturers or distributors.” It also offers investment funds that exclude those companies.

Brown said in her statement that the merchant category code will allow Amalgamated to “report suspicious activity and illegal gun sales” to law enforcement while not interfering with lawful purchases.

“This action answers the call of millions of Americans who want safety from gun violence, and we are proud to lead a broad coalition of advocates, shareholders, and elected officials to achieve this historic outcome,” Brown said.

Amalgamated got support from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats, who said establishing the MCC would help prevent mass shootings.

James, in a letter co-signed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta to executives of American Express, Mastercard, and Visa, said the perpetrator of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people and injured 53 used six credit cards in spending $20,000 to buy the guns and ammunition used in the attack.

Guns Down America said the MCC will apply to all federally-licensed 9,000 gun and ammo retailers.

According to PaymentCloud, a financial services provider to merchants, MCCs were initially established to simplify 1099 reporting to the IRS. However, credit card processors have since started using them to determine fees assessed to merchants and consumer cashback rates.

Risk is another factor card companies consider.

“High-risk merchant category code classifications can also come with other downsides,” PaymentCloud said on its blog. “This can include exclusion from the same eCommerce fraud protections as other businesses. Some MCCs, like those assigned for gambling and money orders, do not receive these protections in transactions where a card is not present.

“Sometimes high-risk businesses are not accepted by a credit card provider at all.”

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Electric Cars Are Not “Zero-Emission Vehicles” thumbnail

Electric Cars Are Not “Zero-Emission Vehicles”

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By James D. Agresti

While praising California’s decision to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, Governor Gavin Newsom declared that this will require “100% of new car sales in California to be zero-emission vehicles” like “electric cars.” In reality, electric cars emit substantial amounts of pollutants and may be more harmful to the environment than conventional cars.

Toxic Pollution

The notion that electric vehicles are “zero-emission” is rooted in a deceptive narrative that ignores all pollutants which don’t come out of a tailpipe. Assessing the environmental impacts of energy technologies requires measuring all forms of pollution they emit over their entire lives, not a narrow slice of them. To do this, researchers perform “life cycle assessments” or LCAs. As explained by the Environmental Protection Agency, LCAs allow for:

“the estimation of the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life cycle, often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses (e.g., raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal, etc.). By including the impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product and process selection.”

LCAs are subject to multiple levels of uncertainty, but an assessment published by the Journal of Cleaner Production in 2021 shatters the notion that electric cars are cleaner than conventional ones, much less “zero emission.” The LCA found that manufacturing, charging, operating, and disposing of electric vehicles produce more of every major category of pollutants than conventional cars. This includes:

“an increase in fine particulate matter formation (26%), human carcinogenic (20%) and non-carcinogenic toxicity (61%), terrestrial ecotoxicity (31%), freshwater ecotoxicity (39%), and marine ecotoxicity (41%) relative to petrol vehicles.”

Foreshadowing that result, a 2018 report by the European Environment Agency warned that studies on the “human toxicity impacts” of electric vehicles were “limited” and that electric cars “could be responsible for greater negative impacts” than conventional cars.

Similarly, a 2018 article in the journal Environmental Research Letters stated that a failure to account for the “environmental implications” of mining lithium to make batteries for electric cars “would directly counter the intent” of “incentivizing electric vehicle adoption” and “needs to be urgently addressed.”

The 2021 paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production has now addressed this issue, and it shows electric cars emit more toxic pollution than gasoline-powered cars. Yet, politicians who embraced the electric car agenda before comprehensive data was available continue to plow ahead in spite of the facts.

Local Pollution

Regardless of overall toxic emissions, the European Environment Agency points out that electric vehicles “potentially offer local air quality benefits” because pollution from their manufacturing, charging, and disposal is usually emitted away from densely populated areas.

Simply stated, switching to electric cars transfers pollution from urbanites in wealthy nations to poor countries that mine and manufacture their components and to communities with power plants and disposal sites. In the words of the 2021 paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production, this “transfer of environmental burdens” causes “workers and ecosystems in third countries” to be “exposed to higher rates of toxic substances.”

China dominates the global supply chains for green energy components not merely because of cheap labor but because they have lax environmental standards that tolerate the pollution these products create. Thus, China supplies 78% of the world’s solar cells, 80% of the world’s lithium-ion battery chemicals, and 73% of the world’s finished battery cells.

Highlighting the implications of “China’s role in supplying critical minerals for the global energy transition,” a 2022 study by the Brookings Institute found that “continued reliance on China” will “increase the risk that sourcing of critical minerals will cause or contribute to serious social or environmental harms.” It also documents that the U.S. and other wealthy nations have been unwilling to accept these harms on their own soils.

Even if Newsom disregards the health of poor and slave laborers in other nations, electric vehicles are still not “zero-emission” for the people of California. This is because electric vehicles emit pollutants from road, tire, and brake wear, and these forms of pollution are worse in electric vehicles than standard cars. Per a 2016 paper in the journal Atmospheric Environment, “Electric vehicles are 24% heavier than their conventional counterparts,” and this creates more “non-exhaust emissions” like “tire wear, brake wear, road surface wear and resuspension of road dust.”

Greenhouse Gases

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity, and the 2021 paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production found that electric cars emit 48% less CO2 than gasoline-powered ones. Although this is lower, it is still far from “zero-emission.”

Moreover, a study published by the Ifo Institute of Germany in 2019 found that an electric Tesla Model 3 emits 11% to 28% more CO2 over its lifespan than a diesel Mercedes C220D. Again, LCAs are subject to uncertainty, and no single study is an end-all, but this clearly proves that electric vehicles are far from emission-free.

With no regard for those facts, Gavin Newsom asserts that “California now has a groundbreaking, world-leading plan to achieve 100% zero-emission vehicle sales” that will help “solve this climate crisis.”

Contrary to Newsom’s claim of a “climate crisis,” a wide array of environmental and human welfare measures related to climate change have stayed level or improved for more than three decades. This includes foliage productivity, extinction rates, forest cover, agricultural production, coastal flooding, rainfall and droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and extreme weather fatalities. These empirical facts refute more than 30 years of failed predictions by global warming alarmists.

Newsom then adds another layer of deception by stating that the plan reduces “dangerous carbon emissions” that “pollute our communities.” This misportrays CO2 as a toxic, dirty substance. In reality, it is an organic, colorless, non-carcinogenic gas that has no toxic effects on humans until concentrations exceed at least 6 times the level in Earth’s atmosphere.

Referring to CO2 as “carbon” is also unscientific. That’s because CO2 is not carbon, just like H2O (water) is not hydrogen. There are more than 10 million different carbon compounds, and calling CO2 “carbon” conflates this relatively innocuous gas with highly noxious substances like carbon monoxide and black carbon.

In summary, there is no reliable evidence that greenhouse gas reductions from electric cars will benefit anyone.

Consequences

Like Newsom, the California Air Resources Board boasts that “100% of new cars and light trucks sold in California will be zero-emission vehicles” by 2035. Assuming Newsom and the board members have at least a rudimentary knowledge of electric cars, calling them “zero-emission vehicles” is a lie.

A Google search reveals that journalists and many others are also using this inherently false phrase.

The harms of this deceit extend well beyond pollution. This is because electric cars are more costly than other options, and that’s why people rarely buy electric cars unless governments subsidize or mandate them. As documented by a 2021 paper in the journal Transport and Environment:

Mass market adoption of electric vehicles will likely require either that governments restrict the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles (as planned in some countries and California) or that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] become cost-competitive with gasoline-powered vehicles of similar size and styling.

Regardless of whether these additional costs are paid by consumers or taxpayers, they make people poorer because these expensive cars ultimately travel fewer miles for every dollar spent.

The same applies to other “clean energy” policies that are prevalent in California. This is a major reason why it has the highest electricity prices in the continental U.S., or 77% more than the national average.

Such policies that increase the costs of living have contributed to making California the state with the highest real poverty rate in the nation.

Despite its “green” agenda, California dominates the American Lung Association’s list of cities with the poorest air quality in America. In fact, the nation’s worst four cities for ozone pollution, the worst five cities for year-round particle pollution, and the worst two cities for short-term particle pollution are all in California.

There are certainly many other factors besides energy policies that have led to those dreadful outcomes in California, but lying to people deprives them of the opportunity to make informed decisions about the pros and cons of these policies.

James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research and educational institute dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policy issues.

*****

This article was published by Just Facts and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

U.S. Economic Freedom Index Collapses to Carter Administration Levels thumbnail

U.S. Economic Freedom Index Collapses to Carter Administration Levels

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By Phillip W. Magness

The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World 2022 report was released this morning [September 8]. This report covers 2020, which while most of our recent history is a bit of a blur, was the year when COVID-19 and COVID lockdowns defined our shared experience. The first of those lockdowns began in mid-March, and we spent most of the rest of 2020 figuring out how to negotiate a newly defined world. So whatever we end up seeing in the report, we’ll have to remember that we spent about 80 percent of 2020, for lack of a better word, grounded.

When additional years of data from the COVID era are added, we fully expect that economic freedom around the world will continue to falter. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The 2020 data is bad enough. The global average economic freedom rating fell .14 points in 2020, erasing a decade’s worth of improvements.


But first, some notes on what the Fraser Institute measures.

The Economic Freedom of the World report comprises measurements across five categories and 165 jurisdictions: size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation. Perhaps the most important facet of the report is that we can look at the data in absolute terms, asking, for example, how well the United States has been doing over time. We can also look at the data in relative terms, asking how well the United States has been doing compared to the other nations of the world.

We have become accustomed to seeing a steady climb to better lives. Indeed, many of us could not comprehend living as our grandparents did. But thanks to the Fraser Institute, we now have detailed data from 1980-2020, detailing two generations. How do we stack up?

Many will be surprised that the United States is not at the top of the list of most-free countries. In 2020 the US was seventh, behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, and Australia. And while seventh in the world is nothing to sneeze at, the US trajectory has been downward for quite some time, if only moderately so. In 1980 and 1990, the US was the second economically freest nation in the world. In 2000, it was third. In 2010 and 2015 it was fifth and sixth, respectively. And by 2020, it was seventh.

But that only tells part of the story. It’s when we look at ratings rather than rankings that things get interesting. While the United States has been kicking around in the top ten, even if falling, for decades, it is not doing all that well when compared to itself over time. Indeed, the US’s cumulative rating of 7.97 is considerably lower than its 1980 rating of 8.34. Digging into the recent data, the United States dropped in rank across all five indexed categories from 2019 to 2020. The most significant changes have been in the size of government and regulation categories, where the United States fell 7.32 to 6.79, and 8.68 to 8.11, respectively. Both measures directly reflect the COVID era’s unprecedented expansions of government, as federal spending was unleashed from any semblance of fiscal constraint and draconian regulatory intrusions on daily economic life reached every single American.

In short, the United States finished 2020 less economically free than we were at the tail end of the Carter years. 

In the time since COVID, these problems have only continued to compound. The United States appears to be entering the same economic malaise of bloated bureaucracy, excessive taxation, and spiraling inflation that typified the Carter years. Back then we had to wait in line, sometimes for hours, just to buy gas. Now we have rolling blackouts and energy crises in some states, impending electric vehicle mandates, perpetual budget-busting deficits that were unheard of even two decades ago, and – yes – a return of inflation that tops 8 percent for the year. Perhaps the most telling fact of all is that our elected officials and policymakers haven’t a clue how to reverse these trends. Indeed, they are still feeding them.

So where is all this going? Well, 2021 is a full year of COVID lockdowns, so you can bet that data will be worse. We will know then, though, if 2022 shows a reversal of the decline – assuming that the present trends do not continue to compound the problems that COVID lockdowns started.

The real question now is whether we have learned any lessons about economic freedom and lockdowns. These new data provide us an unwelcome warning of what happens when the power of government becomes unmoored from any restraint, but the trend may yet be reversible.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Election Integrity Should be Bi-Partisan thumbnail

Election Integrity Should be Bi-Partisan

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By Neland Nobel

Election integrity is something everyone should be concerned about. Both parties have an interest in ensuring the public has confidence in the process. If not, it is destructive to the very core of the democratic process. The reason: if elections are not “honest”, what is the point of elections and without elections how can you have “democracy”, that is rule by the people? And, if not rule by the representatives of the people, elected by the consent of voters, by what standard can the “legitimacy” of governance be determined in a Constitutional Republic?

We know that Democrats too are concerned about election integrity because of their loud complaints in the first two decades of the 21st century. However, now they want to demonize anyone who questions the process.

Comparatively speaking, election integrity is even more important than the investigation of the unfortunate trespassing at the Capitol building, but it does not generate near the concern by the press, government officials, tech oligarchs, and Republicans like Liz Cheney. That event applied to just one Presidential election.  Election integrity applies to all elections, at all levels of government.

It is also somewhat disgusting that those that suggest that talking about election integrity is a “threat to democracy” try mightily to shut down the discussion. That is not going to work. We want to discuss it anyway.

What is an honest election? At one time, this seemed rather easy to answer. The results of the election should be determined by the votes cast. That seems simple, but the last election has shown how truly complicated it can be.

Let’s start with the voter. Can we all agree that voters should be citizens? No, some jurisdictions want non-citizens to vote and some resist the presentation of any kind of identification that proves both age and citizenship requirements, and additionally proof the voter is currently alive.

Can we agree that the voter casting the vote should be alive? No, the system often does not reliably verify signatures and ties those signatures to a physical address, which proves the person is who they say they are, and presumably alive and voting only once. A dead person apparently can vote by mail much easier than showing up to the polls and voting in person.  That much has been established. Why they always vote Democrat remains a mystery.

Can we agree that people should only vote once and that my vote should not count more than your vote? A recent study indicated that is difficult to determine that the number of votes cast equals the number of voters. The study found a 2.89% gap between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters. In a number of jurisdictions, the difference could determine the outcome of the election.

Can we agree on how the vote should be exercised? No, we can’t seem to agree on that.  It used to be you voted on one day, election day, and you did so at a polling place where at least there was some supervision and representatives of both parties present to see the supervision was fairly applied. This was standard procedure for a number of years, even when transportation was much more primitive. You voted at the polls on election day.

Today, a good deal of voting, sometimes the majority is done by mail-in and can be spaced over a number of days. And, the votes can be delivered into unsupervised drop boxes, where ballot stuffing can be done. Every voter should see the documentary film, 2000 Mules to get a sense of the extent of the problem.

Today, voting can even begin before campaigns are officially concluded, which allows voters to exercise their franchise often ignorant of late-breaking news, debate results, and opposition research, that might have influenced their thinking and choices. For example, polls indicate a substantial number of voters would have changed their vote, had they known about Hunter Biden and his criminal activities. But the news came after many had already voted.

A process that goes on over days with geographically spaced and unsupervised depositories is just an invitation to defraud the process.

Mail-in voting destroys the important “chain of custody”, which is a way of saying the voter casts a ballot, and that ballot gets to the counting center with no opportunity to change that vote, augment that vote with fake ballots, or remove that vote from the stream of ballots. The chain of custody is very important because it can stop a lot of voter fraud. Mail-in voting is thus rife with opportunities to manipulate, alter, or suppress the actual voting result.

Voting rolls should be regularly updated so people who have moved or died, cannot have their names entered into the process. This will reduce ballot stuffing by “mules.”

Once the votes get to a counting center, ideally, they should be counted by hand or by machines not connected to the internet. Machine counting can be quite accurate. For example, coins and bills are counted at great speed and with great accuracy by financial institutions, but there is no need to connect such analog machines to the internet where software can be hacked or manipulated. Representatives of both parties should be present when tabulations are collected from accurate high-speed analog counting devices.

Getting results to the press needs to take second place to accuracy in the vote count.

Can we all agree that the system should be one man, one vote and that all votes should be counted as accurately as possible? That would seem to be a no-brainer.

Here we will offer perhaps a controversial suggestion. The integrity of the system is a more important value to society than the convenience of the voter, but make voting as easy as possible. Therefore, make election day a holiday from work, so all can participate without great sacrifice to work or home responsibility. Require the voter to show up in person, with ID, and cast his/her vote on election day, not weeks before.

Convenience is a relative condition. For decades I voted at the polls on election day and got addicted to the convenience of mail-in voting. If people could walk, ride a horse or wagon, and get to a distant voting center in our frontier past, it is hardly inconvenient to give a person one task in a day they are getting off, to take a short drive in an air-conditioned bus or car, to vote in person at a polling station. With just one task to perform on a special day of civic responsibility, even those wheelchair-bound should find no difficulty getting to the polls. Usually, there are plenty of volunteers from political parties willing to help get out their mobility-challenged members to vote.

There is no need for independent parties to “harvest” or vote on behalf of another person.

We asked earlier, what is an honest election, and we have talked mostly about the process of voting itself, the security of those votes, and their accurate tabulation.

Beyond those mechanics, what is an honest election process?

In an ideal world, you should maximize freedom of assembly and the free press to see that the public is educated about the policy positions of the candidates and that they make informed decisions based on that information. That also presumes a fairly high degree of knowledge on the part of citizens so they understand their own political system (civics) and know a bit of history about their nation. But there is no realistic way to keep ignorant, bigoted, or uninformed people from voting. If government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, the quality of government will be roughly equivalent to the quality of the governed.

In this realm, there is huge room for improvement. Public-school teachers who teach civics and history often do a poor job. I can recall a few exceptional teachers, but many made these important subjects just about as boring as possible. School choice seems the only alternative to getting better-educated citizens in all subject matters.

However, one thing seems clear from the last election cycle. We now know that government agencies interfered with the flow of information to voters. A high-ranking FBI agent just was forced to resign by deliberately suppressing information about criminal activity in the family of a Presidential candidate. Also, several intelligence and law enforcement agencies conspired with one political party that paid for bogus intelligence, acquired from foreign intelligence operatives, to try to change the outcome of an election.

In a free society, we can’t stop politicians from lying. We can’t stop the press from lying, although competition can help in that regard. And likely, we will never be able to stop leaks from government agencies to their pet press outlets. But clearly, government agencies should not be allowed to put their thumbs, elbows, and feet directly on the electoral scales. Nor should government agencies recruit, intimidate, or otherwise manipulate social media platforms into suppressing some news and releasing others.

Our Constitution forbids the government from suppressing the freedom of speech. That should apply as well to media companies that act as agents of the government.

This last cycle also showed that private companies also were allowed to spend millions of dollars in payments to election officials and private organizations, supposedly to improve the election process.

Government officials should run our elections, not private companies such as FaceBook. To date, 24 states have passed legislation to ban “Zuckbucks”, but not all states have done so.

From what we have described, it should be clear we at present do not have an “honest” election process. The current system is full of deficiencies that can be exploited. Voting rolls are often shoddy, the chain of custody is questionable, and the identification of voters is sketchy.

Do we have an honest electoral process, including a free flow of information and an informed electorate? Probably not on both counts.

At the very least, government intelligence agencies should not be interfering in the process by either planting bogus stories or suppressing real stories. Certainly, to actively conspire with one political party is unethical and cause for dismissal.It likely should be illegal. Government is there for all of us, not just some of us.

A Congressional review of our intelligence agencies, somewhat like the Church committee of the Viet Nam War period seems justified. It appears they took an active role not in cheating on vote counting, but in altering the political outcome through information manipulation and an outright conspiracy with the Democrat party and foreign intelligence operatives.

If the voting process is not secure, and if the election process, specifically the free flow of information is not operative, then you can legitimately say our election process was compromised.

That is not a statement “inciting insurrection”, it is simply saying election integrity is in fact the most important factor supporting our democratic system. Integrity applies to all elections, not just those with electors needed to certify Presidential elections.

It is the enemies of democracy who want to shut the discussion down and block attempts to improve the integrity of our elections.

Our elections likely will never be perfect, but they could be a lot more secure and fair than they currently are.

By all means, let’s have an open discussion and let all views be considered and stop this nonsense that concerned voters are “semi-fascists” any more than concerned parents are “domestic terrorists.”

Our democratic institutions are too sacred to be soiled by this kind of demagoguery.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

Every Curve Flattened thumbnail

Every Curve Flattened

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By Peter C. Earle

Yesterday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressed the mounting problems in European energy markets. On Twitter, blaming Russia for “manipulating” energy markets, she recommended a handful of steps to mitigate the rolling blackouts and other shortages plaguing Europe. The first tweet reads as follows:

Smart Savings of Electricity: We need a strategy to flatten the peaks, which drive the price of electricity…

For anyone who has been awake for as little as a few hours during the past thirty months, yes, we have heard this before. There’s something about hills and troughs in time series that creates discomfort, especially when it brings a notable change in circumstances. And in an age where the belief in the feasibility of the omnipotent state is prevalent, calls for government action inevitably follow. 

If disease infections are rising, everyone should stay at home. If wages are falling, a minimum wage is clearly needed. Should wealth increase rapidly among small strata of society, it must be taxed away. When suicides skyrocket among combat veterans, they should receive counseling and other services. Stock indices or commodity prices are plummeting? Shut down the markets for a random period of time!

Yet nowhere in these cosmetic reactions are nuanced, let alone enduring remedies. Who is being struck by disease, and under what circumstances? Why are wages declining? In what professions, and where? What is the effect on employers and the broader job market? If wealth is rising, why? And what effect does it have on individuals who aren’t wealthy? Is it better to hurl hundreds of thousands of young people into war and sloppily patch them up afterward, or should military forces be deployed far more sparingly? If the prices of financial assets fall, are they not repricing? What new information is spurring that financial realignment? And however painful the decline may be for investors, doesn’t it create new economic information that entrepreneurs and managers can see and use?

Numerals, the symbols developed to represent the mathematical objects we call numbers, came early in human history, permitting the counting and tracking of phenomena. The price system, built on the evolution of money by employing numerals, arose to signal subjective exchange ratios and changes in them over time. The change is not only visible to the immediate consumer, but to other market participants near and far. A massive intellectual edifice surrounds each of us, providing information at varying intervals across uncountable simultaneities. Political incentives, more and more, are aligned toward imposing temporary, usually illusory, stability upon any corner of the human endeavor that strays from constancy.

Some situations require rapid action. But those should be short-lived holding actions explicitly selected to buy time for deeper analysis, determining root causes, connections, trade-offs, and unintended consequences. Clumsy, superficial policies are increasingly the end states of crises or periods of duress. The handful of nations currently on their seventh or eighth failure to impose Zero Covid come immediately to mind, as do the woefully diseconomic choices made by the London Metal Exchange to address the nickel short squeeze in March of this year.

The increasingly popular rule that every curve must be flattened and every dip filled is disconcerting, as every domain touched by human experience exhibits volatility at times. An increasing tendency toward knee-jerk responses from politicians and regulators ignores both the underlying generators of those swings and the harvesting of information embedded within them. The pursuit of nostrums whereby fragile stability is sought regardless of the consequences is a half step removed from uninhibited superstition and an abdication of empirical reality. Thoughtlessly mandating the crushing of trends, in retail electricity prices, unemployment, infections, and beyond, is killing the proverbial messenger. Short-sighted, mechanistic solutions not only solve nothing, but provide creatures that thrive on power a license to intervene again, and again, and again.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

If Conservatives are the New Punks, are Progressives the New Puritans? thumbnail

If Conservatives are the New Punks, are Progressives the New Puritans?

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By Daniel N. Gullotta

Conservatives, particularly those linked with the Moral Majority, have typically been viewed as the fun police. Every week, right-wing radio hosts and TV talking heads objected to the abundance of sex, violence, drugs, and decadence in the lives of Americans. Dungeons & Dragons weren’t just a kid’s game but rather a gateway to Satanism. Rock music wasn’t just fun to dance to but promoted free love and endorsed drug use. Violent movies weren’t just entertaining stories but were responsible for violent crimes. Whether it was on TV, at the movies, being played on the radio, or being sold in the stores, there always seemed to be something prudish conservative critics could point out that millions of normal Americans enjoyed, highlighting the moral decline of the United States. But for some, the days of Glenn Beck condemning the lyrics of My Chemical Romance and Cooper Lawrence decrying the sex scenes in the videogame Mass Effect on Fox News seem like a distant memory.

Today, it is rightwing personalities like The Daily Wire’s Michael J. Knowles, comedian and Fox News host Kat Timpf, Mary Katharine Ham and Vic Matus on the Getting Hammered Podcast, and Twitter sensation “Comfortably Smug,” who seem to be having all the fun. Shows featuring online shock jocks like Louder with Crowder and PragerU revel in entertaining their audiences by trolling liberals and mocking the bizarre beliefs held by extreme progressives. Between the copious amounts of Bang Energy drinks, the irreverent speeches, and the presence of adult film stars, companies like Turning Point USA have conferences that can almost resemble a rock concert. Further, compared to the straight-laced image of former Republican presidents, Donald Trump’s opulent lifestyle, crude demeanor, and ridiculous memeablity seem to have been attractions, not drawbacks, for many voters. All of this has led some commentators to declare conservatism the new “punk rock,” a sentiment that has been echoed and embraced across much of the MAGA right.

In turn, the left—once the bastion of people eager to “stick it to the man” and preachers of anti-conformity—has become the home of “the new Puritans,” according to Commentary’s Noah Rothman in his new book. While moral panics have been constant fixtures of the post-New Left university campus, as Rothman highlights, they have now begun to manifest in parts of the food industry, the entertainment business, and the publishing world, just to name a few. As Rothman’s subtitle denotes, a “war on fun” is being raged by energized activists and nothing the average American enjoys can escape it. From the entertainment we watch, to the comedy we laugh at, to the clothing we wear, to even the food we consume, a new kind of fun policing has emerged over recent years to take issue with all of it. So many of the things Americans take for granted as sources of enjoyment, entertainment, and escapism are now deemed “problematic,” precisely because they remain avenues for fun. As evident from so many online outrages, those willing to dissent and criticize these everchanging progressive orthodoxies might soon find themselves at the wrong end of the Twitter mob and quickly jobless. But for Rothman, this isn’t just a kind of puritanical progressivism, but rather, a new manifestation of Puritanism itself.

Though The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum and plenty of others have likewise compared this anxiety wrought by social media’s call-out and cancel culture to a new kind of puritanism, Rothman’s assessment is distinctive in that he argues that “woke progressivism” isn’t just analogous with Puritanism, but rather has direct historical ties to it. Indebted to George McKenna’s The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism (2008), Rothman argues that far beyond the colonial period, the United States owes much of its cultural norms and traditions, on the left and the right, to the legacy of the Puritans, and the country has been continually shaped by their spiritual descendants. From evangelicals eager to Christianize 19th-century America to crusading efforts of the temperance movement to prohibit alcohol in the early 20th century, the United States has repeatedly seen the rise and fall of various Puritanisms.

Rothman’s analysis in many ways complements John McWhorter’s assessment that “wokeism” (loosely defined) has become a new religion for those on the left eager to force conversions, crush infidels, and punish heretics. But while McWhorter and Rothman agree that this intense zealotry has a religious component, Rothman does not go so far as to say “wokeism” is a new religion per se, due to the lack of a deity/deities (or “superhuman powers” as the University of Notre Dame’s Christian Smith would describe them). Even so, for Rothman, its ideological adherents manifest an enthusiasm that can only be compared to religious zealotry. While the new Puritans may not share the intense Protestant ethos of their 17th-century counterparts, what they do share according to Rothman is a commitment to “waging war on decadence, frivolity, and pleasure for its own sake” as well as a “seriousness” that “looks more to the uncommitted observer like fanaticism.”

Examples of this new Puritanism offered by Rothman are as frightening as they are funny, and troublingly frequent. The New Puritans recounts sagas of outrage and spectacles of progressives, from the fate that befell former host of The Bachelor Chris Harrison, the N.F.L. playing two national anthems (“the Star-Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) to display its commitment to anti-racism, the championing of anti-comic Hannah Gadsby, as well as the rise and fall of the restaurant Holy Land. Though many of Rothman’s case studies are extreme, one does not have to go far to find similar instances of people being branded with a scarlet letter for bucking any given trend in activism.

Throughout the book, Rothman offers readers comparative case studies between the 17th-century Puritanism and today’s so-called new Puritans. Both dislike how sports distracted audiences from the more important subjects, namely the Gospel for the old and the work of antiracism for the new. Both held strong moralistic approaches to the consumption of food and alcohol, critical of those who would enjoy food for its own sake rather than devote their diets to higher ends. Also, both hold apocalyptic world views about the imminence of the end of days, with the new Puritans constantly warning about the fast-approaching dangers of climate danger rather than the Second Coming of Christ. In Rothman’s view, one would be hard pressed to see much of a difference between the dour op-eds stemming from BuzzFeed, The Guardian, and The New Yorker and the theological indictments of Cotton Mather, Benjamin Coleman, and Jeremiah Burroughs.

Many of Rothman’s comparative attempts between 17th-century Puritans and modern progressives, while interesting and at times humorous, do not go beyond surface level similarities.

But in attempting to directly link today’s progressives with historic Puritanism, Rothman’s arguments suffer from many of the same problems McKenna’s do. Rothman repeatedly labels almost every reformist movement from the 19th century onwards as “puritan” inspired or “puritanical” in effect, despite their dramatically different theologies and contexts. Many of Rothman’s comparative attempts between 17th-century Puritans and modern progressives, while interesting and at times humorous, do not go beyond surface-level similarities due to a rich and complex historical context that one cannot grasp in a book like this.

In doing so, the term “Puritan” is continually stretched well beyond its historical meaning and context which makes it difficult to keep the throughlines of Rothman’s argument straight. What is apparent throughout The New Puritans is Rothman’s familiarity with the excellent scholarship of Michael Winship, and Rothman does an exemplary job at dispelling many of the myths surrounding Puritans. But despite these attempts, one cannot help but see H. L. Mencken’s uncharitable view that Puritanism, at its core, is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” underlying much of Rothman’s presentation.

Early on, Rothman confesses that he is preaching to the choir, acknowledging that his book will be most readily consumed by those already mindful of these intense cultural war actors. Because of this, it is doubtful that his warnings will reach those who probably should heed them the most. Though this complaint could be leveled at any number of conservative thinkers and commentators, Rothman’s goal is to apply an intellectual framework to an observable phenomenon, offering conservatives a means for analysis. Likewise, as with so many books designed for a culturally engaged conservative audience, terms like “the left,” “progressives,” and “liberals” quickly become unwieldy.

Because almost all these controversies (or non-controversies) begin on social media, particularly Facebook or Twitter, one quickly gets the impression that this phenomenon is reserved, for the most part, for the “very online.” We all might “live on campus now” as Andrew Sullivan puts it, but certainly not to the same degree or intensity as those hyper-engaged on certain corners of the internet. While The New Puritans is rich with anecdotes, it is short of hard data to comprehend how widespread and how encouraged this kind of “anti-fun progressivism” is. Even so, if Rothman is correct, most ordinary citizens will not be touched by the intensity of the so-called new puritans, but rather the subtle but creeping efforts of like-minded reformists. Furthermore, given the steady diet of online outrage being dished from the right, for example the decrying of LGBT representation in animated Disney movies like Lightyear or the lyrics such as Cardi B’s W.A.P., there is still plenty of conservative puritanism to go around.

Regardless of the gaps in Rothman’s thesis, his antidote, like other critics of online shaming is well taken: Log off (or even delete your accounts) and have fun in the real world with real friends and family. But for those braver, Rothman charges readers to mock the new Puritans into irrelevancy, the tried and true (though equally perilous) tactic used against the Puritans of yesteryears. Much like the scope, influence, and power of this new kind of puritanism, how many people will be willing to risk scarlet letters is an open question.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.

Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS  will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.

Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about. 

It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.

The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.

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